Hinduringendo spaces contributing to the development of the population of the Karusi province

Pascaline Niyokindi is a 36-year-old married woman and mother of 6 children. She is one of the mother leaders of the solidarity groups and is responsible for the Hinduringendo (behavioral change) welfare space in this commune.

The Hinduringendo welfare spaces were set up within the context of the Merankabandi social safety net support project to provide a well-being framework for the beneficiary populations through awareness and learning sessions on good practices in financial management, maternal and child health, nutrition, early childhood development of households and the community.

‘’The Hinduringendo space is a place where we gained essential knowledge for our lives; we were taught how to manage our finances, good family practices, how to educate and accompany our children from an early age, how to use the available resources to feed our children well, etc.’’ Pascaline says.

Several men and women have already benefited from the trainings and are now well equipped in terms of good asset management and family practices. ‘’Before these trainings, we could spend 5000 fbu on alcohol without even thinking of buying a kilo of beans for the children, but now, if you have 5000 BIF, you think of your children first. Then you put 3000 BIF aside for them and with the rest you buy useful things for the family, there is no more waste in our community’’, assures Pascaline

Complementary activities to cash transfers were implemented to promote and bring about change in beneficiary households through the adoption of positive behaviors conducive to investment in human capital.

Since acquiring this knowledge, both men and women beneficiaries of this project have begun to undertake small and large income-generating activities for the benefit of their families and communities.

‘’We have been taught to be entrepreneurial, to create small income-generating activities, to the point that if a woman has 10,000 BIF, she can ensure that her family has everything they need, for example by running a small tomato and vegetable business to earn even more.’’ Pascaline told us.

By combining cash transfers and complementary activities, the Merankabandi project has enabled households to increase their consumption, invest in their children's human capital, strengthen intra-family cohesion, enable children to return to school, undertake income-generating activities and improve the health of children and their mothers.

‘’These spaces have been very useful to us because this is where we do all our meetings and trainings, and the best part is that they will now be used by our children to reinforce their knowledge.’’ Pascaline says with great enthusiasm.

Indeed, these spaces are also used beyond complementary activities more specifically for solidarity groups that have been strengthened with the additional component aimed at the sustainability of the gains of the Merankabandi program.

The additional component focuses on improving household empowerment and resilience through the community system to ensure the sustainability of social protection interventions, and also allows for the rehabilitation of semi-sustainable spaces built by the community, that will also be the setting for early simulation implemented by the community coaches.

The additional sustainability component of the project was funded by the Embassy of Belgium.

''We are confident that this space will benefit our children as it has benefited us and I would like to take this opportunity to thank those who have improved our lives through the Merankabandi project, the World Bank and the Belgian Embassy and their partners,'' said Pascaline.

UNICEF is a partner in the Merankabandi Social Safety Net Project and has provided technical assistance to the program on the complementary component for quality control, behavior change monitoring, analysis, communication, and advocacy.