How a School Club Is Transforming Lives Beyond the Classroom

When Violette’s family faced challenges that made it difficult for her to access school meals, she feared she might have to watch her classmates eat while she went hungry.

Instead of keeping her worries to herself, Violette spoke to her teacher. What happened next surprised her.

Her classmates stepped in.

Members of the WASH and Nutrition Club at her school approached their own parents and asked for support. Their efforts raised enough money to help Violette and seven other children facing similar challenges to access school meals.

It was an amazing act of generosity. It was a lesson in compassion, leadership, and the power children have to make a difference.

The WASH and Nutrition Club at EP Gihango Primary School has 41 student members, guided by two teachers. Through extracurricular activities, students learn about hygiene, nutrition, and healthy lifestyles—but what they learn does not stay within the school walls.

They are becoming champions of change.

Club members promote proper handwashing, help keep their school clean, teach their peers about balanced meals, and have established a vegetable garden where they learn how growing nutritious foods can help prevent malnutrition.

Then they take those lessons home.

For 12-year-old Marie Irene, a Primary Six pupil, learning about the importance of vegetables inspired her to act.

“I told my father that vegetables were important for preventing malnutrition and that I wanted us to grow them at home.”

Her father gave her money to buy seedlings, while her mother helped prepare the land and plant them.

Today, the family’s kitchen garden provides fresh vegetables for their daily meals.

“We no longer have to buy vegetables from the market, and our family is eating healthier,” Marie says proudly.

For Vincent, one of the teachers mentoring the club, the transformation is about more than cleaner classrooms.

“What makes me happiest is seeing the children confidently teaching others. During school assemblies, they share lessons on hygiene and nutrition with fellow students and encourage them to pass those messages on to their families.”

The club members also visit parents and participate in community gatherings, demonstrating proper hygiene practices, explaining the importance of balanced diets, and encouraging families to establish kitchen gardens. In this way, knowledge travels from the classroom into homes and communities.

The WASH and Nutrition Club is one way World Vision Rwanda’s ENOUGH Campaign is helping tackle the root causes of child hunger and malnutrition. Working alongside communities, schools, local leaders, government and partners—including Collectif des Ligues et Associations de Défense des Droits de l’Homme au Rwanda (CLADHO)—the campaign promotes the knowledge, behaviours and systems needed to prevent malnutrition and help children thrive.

At EP Gihango, the impact can be seen not only in cleaner classrooms and greener gardens, but in children discovering that they have the power to change lives—including those of their classmates, families and communities.

Sometimes, the most powerful champions against malnutrition are not adults.

They are children who choose to care for one another.

By Charity Beza Uwase : Communications and Marketing Coordinator