Mission

ORI is dedicated to helping orphans and other socially vulnerable young people in Rwanda pursue a university education and ultimately become leaders in fostering economic development and social reconciliation. ORI provides holistic support – including tuition, housing, healthcare, counseling and a range of supplemental training programs – to ensure that its students are prepared to excel.

ORI’s focus on university education is unique. Most international support for Rwandan education is directed toward primary and secondary schools, with little attention paid to increasing the availability of post-secondary education. University access is particularly difficult for women and poor students – two groups that have been historically underrepresented in Rwandan higher education.

ORI aims, over time, to transform the pool of intellectual capital in Rwanda by dramatically increasing the number of university graduates and enhancing the social and gender diversity of the university population. The students we support have overcome extremely challenging obstacles on their paths to a university education, but would be unable to continue their studies without the financial support and other services that ORI provides.

Ultimately, ORI’s mission is premised on the belief that fostering higher education for highly-talented but needy individuals will have long-term dividends for economic, social and political development in Rwanda.

Strategy

ORI’s principal strategic objectives are as follows:

• To recruit, identify and select orphans and other vulnerable young people who have demonstrated academic talent and individual drive
• To provide financial and other forms of support designed to maximize the likelihood that ORI-selected students will complete their university degrees and be well-positioned to enter the mainstream economy after graduation
• To develop a successful, comprehensive program model that will help catalyze increased access to higher education for vulnerable children in other African countries

Effective implementation of these goals depends, first, on careful selection of scholarship recipients and, second, on ORI’s ability to design and provide appropriately holistic and individualized support programs to students throughout their university careers.

The selection process for candidates – carried out in cooperation with ORI’s Rwandan partner organizations – is a rigorous one. Through a written application and personal interviews, applicants are carefully evaluated on the basis of demonstrated academic performance, individual motivation, and competence in French and English (the languages of university instruction).

Following their selection, scholarship winners receive language and computer skills training prior to university matriculation. Thereafter, and continuing through their university years, ORI offers its beneficiaries a variety of forms of support, both individual and collective. Details of these support programs, which include life skills training, further language training, individual tutoring, career development assistance and psychosocial counseling, may be found here.

ORI routinely evaluates its own efforts, and translates feedback from the evaluative process into strategic and tactical changes. Our services are designed to be readily scalable to accommodate each new class of ORI students that enters the program.