31.08.2023

Everything Can Change

Visiting UEM's Mission House: John Wesley Kabango (left) shows Valerie Nyirabihimana around and introduces her to the collegues. Photo by: Johannes Schermuly, UEM

Madame Valerie Nyirabihimana visited Germany for the 5^th International Summer School in Hofgeismar in August 2023.

She is a teacher for Social Work by profession and married to the Rt. Rev. Musabyimana Assiel, Bishop of Kigeme Diocese in Rwanda. Nyirabihimana is the President of the Mothers’ Union of the EAR* Kigeme Diocese and project leader of the Single Teenage Mothers’ Project within the Diocese.

During her stay, she shared about the work she is doing in Kigeme:

For families it is often difficult to deal with young family members getting pregnant, because it is considered a shame before marriage. Girls and young women often drop out of school and get socially isolated once they are pregnant before marriage. Here the church has the responsibility to bring hope back to their lives. Members of the project visit the families and their pregnant members and talk to them about possibilities to come back together after the disturbances.

“Maybe next time she will be a minister!”, Nyirabihimana points out: In her work it is important to show the parents of the pregnant youth perspectives for the future. The women working in the project do consider sex before marriage a sin, and they talk to young people about it. But this doesn’t mean that relationships in their family have to end:

There is a woman, now she is a very well known preacher in Huye, but some years ago she got pregnant while being a teenager. Madame Nyirabihimana and the Teenage Mothers’ project called her to tell others about her life. Everything can change, that is her message to pregnant youth and their parents and families.

*EAR = Église Anglicane du Rwanda (Anglican Church in Rwanda)