The Embedding Integrated Water Resources Management in Rwanda –EWMR project, commonly known as the Sebeya project, implementing partner institutions conducted a three-week mass mobilization campaign in markets, schools, and churches across Rubavu, Nyabihu, Rutsiro, and Ngororero districts. Nearly 51,000 individuals were reached and urged to increase their engagement to maintain and take advantage of the project interventions for their development in the long term.
Mukamana Francoise met in the Nyakiriba market in the Rubavu district and acknowledged having heard about the Sebeya project and its interventions but did not know her role in ensuring the maintenance of the project interventions for the benefit of her family’s economic growth yet. “It is beneficial to have such mass mobilization meetings where Sebeya catchment residents can listen to messages that remind them to take care of the project realizations and, more importantly, take them as the booster of their economy,” she said.
Mukamana revealed that it was beneficial to organize mass mobilization campaigns to guarantee continuous landscape restoration and well-managed water resources in the Sebeya catchment. “It would be a waste of money and time for the Sebeya project if we, as beneficiaries, don’t manage with our resources to maintain all the Sebeya project interventions at our disposal for our development”, she added.
On his side, Sendegeya Celestin, the Headteacher of Ecole Secondaire de Nyabirasi in the Rutsiro district, expressed his satisfaction in seeing schools mobilized for landscape restoration and water resources management Sebeya Catchment. “Long-term Sebeya Catchment protection will depend on the attitude in future of today’s kids who, at their young age, are being taught how beneficial it is for humanity to protect Sebeya catchment and maintain EWMR existing interventions”, he stated.
Father Irivuzumwami Denys of Kavumu catholic Parish in the Rutsiro district agreed to support the mass mobilization campaigns across his parish by accepting to disseminate EWMR messages that invite Sebeya catchment communities for owning and engaging in maintaining the project interventions and in increasing the productivity of radical and progressive terraces, kitchen gardens and donated livestock. Indeed, he added that environmental protection is part of the Catholic Church’s social teachings besides the Holy Bible. “Thus, messages aiming at landscape restoration and water resources management in Sebeya catchment will always be part of my homilies”.
Apart from written messages distributed on flyers, calendars, posters, and block notes, other letters were written as announcements. They were read in churches or posted on institutions’ notice boards. Other messages were disseminated through songs, poems, audio, and video sketches played through speakers in markets and schools.