Friends of Rwandan Rugby: November 2020 – March 2021

10 Mar Friends of Rwandan Rugby: November 2020 – March 2021

Enzygo continues to support Friends of Rwandan Rugby and there great work.

A charity that uses rugby to encourage a healthy, active lifestyle for children in Rwanda and promote the rugby ethos of fair play, respect, friendship and fun.

In November 2020 schools in Rwanda gradually opened up for the first time since March when they had all been closed due to the Coronavirus pandemic, but a second wave of infections saw many closed again in January. All schools re-opened again in February but are currently not open to outside agencies. Happily, Rwanda received its first batch of vaccines under the Covax facility on Wednesday 3rd March, it may be some time before they are able to reach many areas but we are hopeful.

The FoRR Rugby Development Officers have in the meantime been busy in their communities keeping their local population fit and active with socially distanced jogging and exercise and questionnaires to encourage sport in the schools and try to engage more girls to participate. They have also been using different skills, doing kit audits and working remotely as a team to produce a handbook written by RDOs for RDOs. We are confident this will be a very useful resource for sharing good practice and especially for the new RDOs we are hoping to employ in 2021.

Exciting news for the Charity is that one of our Trustees and Volunteers, Mary Watkins, was awarded a British Empire Medal in the New Year’s Honours list in January, she featured on the BBC and local media for her tireless work with FoRR and for services to international development.

We remain hopeful that it won’t be long before our RDO’s will be back coaching in schools and running tournaments in their local areas, and we are able to resume our fundraising rugby tours to Rwanda.