SOS Mothers from the SOS Children’s Village Kayonza, Nyamagabe, Gicumbi and Kigali have received ICDL certification after successful completion of the training ICDL Digital Citizen, Digital Care Assistant and DCA-Rafiki.

SOS Children’s Villages in Rwanda turned to digitalization to operate efficiently. An IT-based information management system has been established at SOS locations to monitor the wellbeing of children in the Alternative Care program and computer labs for youth to help them access labor market opportunities.

The National Director of SOS Children’s Villages in Rwanda, Mr. Jean Bosco Kwizera, thanked the SOS Mothers for their courage throughout the whole period of training and for having passed the examinations of the two basic modules in the ICDL program.

He added that the ICDL training is essential for all SOS Mothers because it will help them to fulfill their responsibility of caring for children who lost their parental care.

“Today, it is not easy to work professionally with no knowledge in IT skills. As SOS Mothers, you have to learn IT in order to take care of children who lost parental care. Imagine all the time you may spend looking for a file when you could have a database saved on your computer. SOS Children’s Villages in Rwanda needs to increase co-worker digital literacy.”

Kwizera added that SOS Children’s Villages in Rwanda will continue to provide them with ongoing IT capacity building for practice. He urged trained SOS Mothers to share their knowledge and skills.

Esperance Mukandori SOS Mother at the Byumba location said that the ICDL training will help them to fulfill their responsibility of caring for children.

“The world is at a time where technology is advancing quite ‘quickly’.Before being trained in ICDL, I was not able to help my children in ICT but now I am able. I hope that even our children and youth will benefit from this important training,” she said.

Josephine Dushimiyimana SOS auntie at Kigali location said that she invested a lot of time to be trained in ICT.

As SOS Aunties, we have a lot of things to do to take care of children but I decided to work hard to receive this certificate. “Current jobs entail the use of technology and most of the jobs require professional digital skills for productivity, so we cannot raise better future citizens without ICT knowledge,” Josephine said.

In line with the Integrated Child Rights Policy (CRP), SOS Children’s Villages in Rwanda core value states “every child should live in a family and grow with love, respect and security”. SOS Children’s Village in Rwanda commissioned the development of an efficient IT-based information management system to monitor the wellbeing of children and young people without parental care.