My name is TUMUKUNDE VIVIANE, I am studying finance at the university of Rwanda,Nyagatare campus. I am the first the born in a family of two children living with a single mother who is living with a hearing Impairment. After completing my primary education with good grades, I was admitted to a boarding secondary school.

It was not easy to get school fees and other requirements but my family tried their best to pay my Ordinary level’s school fees. This situation did not weigh me down, it motivated me instead and I passed the O level exams successfully with 27 aggregates.

I was over joyed but at the back of my mind I knew that my school journey had ended because I knew my family did not have the capacity to support me to further my studies. I spent a whole year at home while my classmates continued with school. I started losing hope and vision for the future.

During the school holidays, I paid my former school mate a visit and she told me that she was studying under the sponsorship of FAWE Rwanda. She told me that FAWE Rwanda helps female students to study and that it is receiving new applicants from disadvantaged families, so I got curious and decided to try my luck by applying for the scholarship but I did not have hope to be selected.

On this very sunny Thursday morning in 2016, I received a telephone call from FAWE Rwanda which was informing me that I had been selected among many applicants to further my studies. It was the best news I had ever heard in my lifetime, I jumped up and started celebrating that I am going back to school again, I hardly believed it.
I was placed in one of the best schools in Rwanda and that made me very proud and that was the time that I admitted that I am going to be a student again.

On 26thJanuary 2016 I reported to school with a mission to be the best I ever was to make my mother proud. I strived to work hard and my performance was really good.TUSEME club helped me a great deal because it built my confidence where I engaged in debates and I was able to grow my public speaking skills and be open minded.

FAWE Rwanda has built my capacity through different trainings like : leadership, Entrepreneurship, ICT, and career guidance. These built in me a spirit of saving which helped me to start a small business of rearing goats which now helps me to support my family.

Through different opportunities that we are given by FAWE Rwanda and Mastercard Foundation, we are taught moral values like giving back to the community. In line with this value which is considered as the FAWE Rwanda/Mastercard scholars’ core value, I and my colleagues have supported other vulnerable families in our communities through providing basic needs.

My sincere appreciation goes out to FAWE Rwanda and Mastercard foundation for its fruitful support to build women of vision for the future. My advice to fellow girls is “let’s profit every opportunity that we are given by the government of Rwanda and development partners like FAWE Rwanda and Mastercard so that we become seeds of change in our communities’’.