HEZA Initiative

Project leader: Samuel Nduwayezu
Location: Ruhengeri, also known as Musanze or Muhoza, Rwanda

HEZA Initiative (HEZA) was founded in 2022 with the aim of providing support to mothers and their children in Rwanda. The organisation's primary focus is to combat malnutrition within this vulnerable group and to date they have done this through a range of nutrition-focused programmes.

Teenage pregnancy is a particularly significant issue in Rwanda, with the latest Demographic and Health Survey (DHS 2020) statistics indicating that 5% of the adolescent population (15-19 years) are parents, while the previous DHS (2015) had shown 7%. These young mothers struggle to find employment and, as a result, can’t generate income to provide for their families' basic needs. This is the desperate need that HEZA intends to serve.

HEZA recently made a strategic decision to start a social enterprise to enhance its support for teenage mothers and their families. This is where All Good Ventures comes in. With our help, HEZA plans to launch The Poultry Project, a poultry farm aimed at raising chickens for egg production and sales.

Ultimately, profits generated from the sales of eggs will be dedicated to training cohorts of teenage mothers in smallholder poultry farming. Upon completing four months of training (which includes learning about common chicken diseases, administering vaccines, supplemental feeding, hutch building, getting the product to market, basic business skills and more), each cohort will also receive chickens as seed capital from HEZA to initiate their own farms. This approach aims to foster self-sustainability and ensure a continuous source of food and income for teenage mothers and their families.