Wealth Village

Poverty Graduation CHALLENGE; Burundi

PROVEN INTERVENTION TO BE DISTRIBUTED

Poverty Graduation Program

Learn more about the Poverty Graduation Challenge and why an evidence-based program that combines cash or asset transfers with mentorship and other forms of financial and social support helps graduate the ultra poor from poverty.

DISTRIBUTION MODEL INNOVATION

Wealth Village aims to break the cycle of poverty in rural Burundi through entrepreneurship.

The Wealth Village model ensures that the extremely poor individuals in the community, especially women, are empowered or enabled to graduate out of extreme poverty and achieve economic and social advancement through comprehensive business skills and financial literacy training, dedicated coaching and mentoring, and savings as well as social support.

The founding team is led by a passionate changemaker who grew up in a rural area, where access to basic needs was a daily struggle for many households. This firsthand experience inspired a lifelong commitment to addressing extreme poverty. Now a seasoned Monitoring and Evaluation specialist in the NGO sector, he brings data-driven strategies and community insight to create impactful, sustainable solutions.

PILOT AND SCALING GOALS

• Directly reach 30 women within three months

• Provide tailored skills training, coaching, and routine mentoring to 30 women for effective management of their business ventures by the end of the pilot and create 15 savings groups.

• Raise additional USD 50,000 from new donors within three months.

FOUNDING TEAM

Olivier Mukunzi - Founder and CEO

Action for Healthy Youth

SUGAR DADDY AWARENESS CHALLENGE; BURUNDI

PROVEN INTERVENTION TO BE DISTRIBUTED

Sugar Daddy Awareness classes. 

Learn more about the Sugar Daddy Awareness Challenge and how a simple, one-hour “sugar daddy awareness” training could help countless girls avoid pregnancy while still in school, which can lead to entrenched poverty, and build a better life.

DISTRIBUTION MODEL INNOVATION

Action For Healthy Youth (ACHY) empowers young people with knowledge and skills to reduce the risk of sexually transmitted diseases and teenage pregnancies.

In Burundi, teenage pregnancy is one of the major causes of school dropout among adolescent girls. The rate of teenage pregnancy stands at up to 15% in some parts of the country. Due to poor birth outcomes of teen pregnancies, the maternal mortality among girls aged 15 to 24 is one of the highest in Burundi, representing almost the quarter (24.1%) of the overall maternal mortality. The UNFPA’s study revealed that the main authors of unintended pregnancies to teenage girls are generally older men, suggesting that young girls engage in unprotected cross-generational sexual relationships which possibly expose them to HIV infection since the prevalence of HIV/AIDS is relatively higher among older men in Burundi.

A proven solution to this challenge exists in form of “Sugar Daddy Awareness” classes. This is an educational intervention that provides teenagers with knowledge about the relative risk of dating older men. A randomized evaluation in Kenya found that this intervention was able to reduce the likelihood of pregnancy and HIV infection by 28 percent in the subsequent year. However, for this intervention to be successful, it has to be adapted to the local context. For instance, Young 1ove’s analysis indicated that younger generations in Botswana may become less fearful of exposure to HIV risk relative to the risk of getting pregnant.

During our pilot in Kayanza Province, trained young facilitators will visit grade 7, 8 and 9 young girls (normally aged around 15 years) in schools and deliver the core message that sexually partnering with older men is a risky behavior, both in terms of HIV infection and teenage pregnancies. The one-hour class will be composed of a standard 20-minute educational DVD translated into local language, followed by a short lecture and class discussion. Self-administered questionnaires will be issued before and after the training to evaluate the influence of the sugar daddy class on the young girls’ level of awareness.

Action for Healthy Youth (ACHY) is a non-profit organization founded by Ladouce Ingrid Iradukunda, a Pan African University Scholar and Dr Fernand Hakizamana, an assistant lecturer at the University of Great Lakes. They advocate for young people’s sexual and reproductive health and rights.

PILOT AND SCALING GOALS

• Reach 3,000 students during the three-month pilot

• Raise an additional $52,000 during the three-month pilot

• Reach 24,000 students by the end of year 1

• Reach 55,000 students by the end of year 2

 

FOUNDING TEAM

Ladouce Ingrid Iradukunda - Executive Director

Fernand Hakizimana - Training Manager

Water for Development

CHLORINE DISPENSER CHALLENGE; BURUNDI

PROVEN INTERVENTION TO BE DISTRIBUTED

Point-of-use chlorine dispensers

Learn more about the Chlorine Challenge and other D-Prize Distribution Challenges.

DISTRIBUTION MODEL INNOVATION

Water for Development (Water4Dev) provides access to safe water to reduce the incidence of water-borne diseases.

The chlorine dispensers project consists of three main components; (i) A dispenser hardware installed next to a communal water source, (ii) an incessant community education by a local promoter to encourage take-up and (iii) the ongoing supply of chlorine refills. Our operating model will be tested in Cibitoke Province of Burundi for three months before a full scale countrywide.

The Chlorine Dispenser System is an innovative way of treating water with dilute chlorine at the points of water collection. This technology was developed in 2007 by Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) and its affiliates and has been proven as the most cost-effective option of treating water that results in a reduction of child diarrhea by 20-40% at a cost of only USD 1.28 per person reached per year.

Installing a chlorine dispenser next to a water point offers maximum convenience to users of this free service, leading to a high adoption rate. What’s more, chlorinating water protects water from potential recontamination during collection and storage, and eliminates the need to boil water, saving time and effectively reduce the carbon footprint.

Water4Dev was started in 2020 by Olivier Nihimbazwe, a RUFORUM@MasterCard Foundation Scholar who serves as the Executive Director. Other founding members include Prosper Cishahayo and Willy Ndayishimiye. We believe that good health is a prerequisite to enhancing the human capital and hence, the economic growth of communities and the country at large.

PILOT AND SCALING GOALS

• Install 25 chlorine dispensers reaching 5,000 beneficiaries during the three-month pilot

• Raise an additional $75,000 during the three-month pilot

• Reach 30,000 beneficiaries by the end of year 1

• Reach 70,000 beneficiaries by the end of year 2

FOUNDING TEAM

Olivier Nihimbazwe - Executive Director and Project Coordinator

Prosper Cishahayo - Supply Chain Manager

Willy Ndayishimiye - M&E Manager

YouthGlobe

SCHOLARSHIPS CHALLENGE; BURUNDI

PROVEN INTERVENTION TO BE DISTRIBUTED

Scholarships for students. 

Learn more about our current distribution challenges and why we focus on interventions that are proven to impact lives.  

DISTRIBUTION MODEL INNOVATION

Civil war ravaged Burundi from the early 1990s to 2005 with an estimated death toll of 300,000 in a nation of 10 million. The war orphaned tens of thousands of children and shattered the national economy. The country is not able to provide free secondary education in its public schools. However, less than $30 is enough to put a Burundian student through a year of high school which gives Youth Globe the opportunity to be a highly cost-effective platform for donors to make an impact on many young lives.

YouthGlobe sponsors scholarship recipients from six partner high schools in different regions of Burundi. Many of these scholars have recently returned home from refugee camps in Tanzania and are finding ways of reintegrating into their local Burundian communities. YouthGlobe USA will promote and sell the scholarship program to potential patrons, with YouthGlobe South Korea aiding in fundraising efforts. YouthGlobe Burundi will review and admit scholars. 

Scholars are recommended by the headmasters of each partner school. Following the recommendation, YouthGlobe reviews the candidate's academic record and relevant personal information with the consent of the student's parents or legal guardians, or in the absence of a guardian, with the student herself. Applications from candidates who have lost both parents are weighted favorably. YouthGlobe aims fro a 2:1 female-to-male ratio in distributing scholarships. 

 

PILOT AND SCALING GOALS

• Award 100 scholarships within the pilot phase

• Expand to 12 partner schools during the pilot phase

• Collect at least 100 donor pledges to fund scholars during the pilot phase

• Scale to 2,000 scholarships by the end of year 1

• Collect 2,000 donor pledges to fund scholars by the end of year 1

 

FOUNDING TEAM

Salathiel Ntakirutimana - Director 

Miles Graham - Fundraising Manager 

Nicky Kwon - Partnership Manager 

Ding Zhou - Program Manager