About Us

Rwanda Restored was established by Geoff Lane, a retired HR manager, in 2006. After working in India with street children for 3 years, he visited Rwanda in 1999 and saw a country trying to get back on its feet after the genocide. Many widows were being forced into prostitution in order to provide food and housing for their children and there were many children desperate to go to school. Various projects were established before the charity was formed and these included upgrading and expanding two primary schools, building a handicraft centre to employ widows and orphans, and sponsoring children to attend secondary school.

Our main objective is to help provide a bright future for Rwanda children, many of whom have been orphaned, by providing them with an opportunity to attend school. We also ensure that these children have basic accommodation either with their family or within a boarding school, food and clothes.

In addition, we also aim to support the parents of these children, many of whom are widows because of HIV, AIDS and the genocide of 1994. Our aim is to steer them into a safer and productive life by encouraging and supporting local trade in gift items such as cards, embroidery and other handicrafts.

To do its work, Rwanda Restored is totally dependent on donations from the public and business. It is possible to allocate a donation to a particular project.

Today, Rwanda Restored is involved in the following work:

• Building a Secondary School – our original plan was to build a secondary school near Kigali which will provide places for up to 1150 students; the total cost of the build was estimated to be between £1,500,000 – £2,000,000.  However, due to a recent change in the Government’s provision for secondary education in Rwanda; it has become necessary to consolidate the scale of this undertaking and we are now in the process of finishing off completing the present phase of the school that will provide places for 350 students. We will then seek to provide additional improvements to the school’s facilities such as the building and equipping a science facility before we embark on any further expansion. 
• Improving Primary Schools – upgrading and expanding two primary schools in Kwirama & Gatovu. At present there are approximately 1500 pupils at these schools, but many more children in the area need to go to school and a number of additional classrooms and toilets are needed urgently.
• Supporting Widows & Orphans - who make banana bark cards, tablecloths & runners, and embroidered pictures of African animals and birds, etc. These items are then sold in the UK to provide them with an income to support themselves and their families.
• Sponsorship – sponsoring children (including AIDs orphans) for secondary & higher education.
• Supporting Widows – by providing food, clothes, mosquito nets and accommodation. We also provide goats to widows that they use to fertilise their land to make it more productive for the growing of vegetables to either eat themselves or sell locally to provide an income for themselves and their families.
• Food Parcels – A new initiative undertaken in 2016 is the provision of food parcels for the poor of Rwanda. We provide food parcels of 5kgs each of sogum, beans, flour, rice and sugar, together with a 5 litre container of cooking oil to the value of £25 to local churches for distribution by the church elders to the poorest in their congregations and others in their local communities as a means of outreach in the spreading of the Gospel.