About
In Kinyarwanda, the native language of Rwanda, the word umubano means relationship, in terms of friendship. Umubano’s Sister School program works to build these relationships by creating long lasting friendships between students from the United States and students from Rwanda. Umubano, a program of an entirely student run non-profit organization, Discover Worlds, works as a matchmaker between schools in the United States and schools in Rwanda. Umubano’s partner organization in Rwanda is Rwandans Allied for Peace and Progress (RAPP).
The program was created by 6 American and 3 Rwandan young adults during a human rights workshop in Kigali, Rwanda that was facilitated by the organization Global Youth Connect. After visiting several elementary and secondary schools throughout the country, these students felt compelled to create an action-plan that aimed to improve access to good education and resources for students in Rwanda. Together, these young adults decided to establish a cultural exchange program that would address this issue by connecting youth in Rwanda to youth in the U.S. through education, letter-writing, and fundraising.
Goals of the Umubano program:
Cultural Exchange: To empower students in Rwanda and in the US to forge cross-cultural relationships in order develop an understanding of and respect for a culture different than their own.
Dialogue: To encourage dialogue between students and teachers from different countries to share knowledge, reduce stereotypes and preconceptions about each other, and increase the share of ideas and information across cultural boundaries.
Education: The Umubano program seeks to infuse educational opportunities into the program so that students from both countries learn about the effects of and reasons for inequality, power relations, poverty, prejudice, and exclusion. Students are encouraged to explore how their actions have a ripple effect across the world. Students can learn about how colonialism and its legacy still affect parts of the world today.
Consciousness: The Umubano program encourages students to raise their own consciousnesses about different cultures and people through the exchange of idea and information between them and their pen-pal across the world. Students are encouraged that think about how individual actions affect the world we live in.
Human Rights: The Umubano program is based on the fundamental belief that education is a universal human right, and that education occurs both inside and outside of classroom. Students are encouraged to discuss human rights in their correspondence with their pen-pal and explore the different ideas of human rights across cultural boundaries.
Grassroots Activism: The program is designed so that students and teachers can take their relationship with their partner school in any direction they wish. Students and teachers are encouraged to pick issues that matter most to them, and work independently of the Umubano program to design projects/activities/events that are consistent with these goals.