SAVING AND INTERNAL LENDING COMMUNITIES

Saving and Internal Lending Communities (SILCs)

for youth capacity building in the field of entrepreneurship creativity and innovation

AJECL’s entrepreneurship support targets low-income and vulnerable youth. They receive 20–40 hours of training on: Designing and managing income-generating activities, Leadership, Financial management, Nonviolent conflict resolution.

They then form community-based Saving and Internal Lending Communities (SILCs). Members start saving and offering internal loans while maintaining bank accounts in local microfinance institutions. AJECL provides startup capital as a reimbursable revolving credit fund to support their savings. After three years of accompaniment, groups become mature enough to work effectively with microfinance institutions. AJECL then collaborates with these mature groups to establish and support new SILC groups in the community.

The key activities of our intervention are combined in a complete cycle of youth capacity building in the field of entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation as usually implemented by AJECL: Training-Coaching-Funding-Coaching- Evaluating.

We are deeply grateful to LemonAid and Charity Foundation for their support since 2018 up to 2025. Through this partnership, we have reached and empowered more than 800 young people who established Savings and Internal Lending Communities across the country. These initiatives have significantly improved the living conditions of youth in Rwanda and demonstrated the effectiveness of our model in promoting entrepreneurship and job creation. This approach has strengthened youth empowerment by providing sustainable opportunities for economic growth and self-reliance.

Gwizamahoro cup competition

As part of the promotion of the culture of brotherhood and peace through active non-violence during this century, the AJECL, in collaboration with the parishes, organizes sports and cultural competitions for young boys and girls with a special trophy: “Gwizamahoro cup”

The theme of Gwizamahoro cup is: “We, the elders of the 21st century, we want to grow in conviviality and never in hostility”. It calls on the first generation of 21^st century (those who will be aged 11 to 35 in 2025), on the one hand, not to resort to violence to solve their problems at the individual, family, regional or international level; it invites them, on the other hand, to take the path of active non-violence to resolve conflicts. This awareness applies the qualification of benevolent elders (Infura z’umugisha) to elders who cultivate conviviality and refuse the logic of violence; the qualification of malevolent elders to elders who maintain a spirit of hatred and violence; the qualification of close friends of the 21st century to the cadets of the 20th century who show the elders of the 21st century the way to build a non-violent future; the qualification of traitors of the 21st century to the cadets of the 20th century who transmit to the elders of the 21st century a message of division and violence.