Our Story

We trust in the power of our God, who made all people. We believe Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, set us an example of hope, mercy, and love for our neighbor. We believe Christians are not to minister to the world’s needs anonymously but in the name of Jesus, through whom God has shown love and compassion toward us.

We serve vulnerable children because Christ’s love compels us to love others. By proclaiming that we are doing what we do in Jesus’ name, we explain the source of the love and compassion we evidence. We seek to embody and live out Christ’s example of love through our presence and sharing our resources with at-risk children in Rwanda.

The co-founder of Rwanda Children, Serge Gasore, was born in Rwanda. Serge was a child during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide against the Tutsi and barely escaped death on several occasions. Many of Serge’s family members and friends died during the genocide.

Serge came to the United States on a track scholarship as a young adult. During this time, God restored Serge's faith and placed within him a passion for returning to Rwanda to serve children facing desperate situations. Serge's God-sized dream was to provide daily shelter, food, medical care, and education to the forgotten children of Rwanda.

Moving toward realizing this dream, in 2014, Serge and his wife, Esperance, founded Rwanda Children, a non-profit organization that provides daily shelter, food, medical care, education, and hope to forgotten and marginalized children in Rwanda — all in the name of Jesus.

Through the efforts of Rwanda Children and its many supportive partners, an initial home for children was constructed in Rwanda in 2014. This house is still being used as an Early Childhood Development Center for children two years old and younger. Land for additional children's homes and other structures was purchased in 2015.  

In January 2016, Serge and Esperance transitioned with their children from the U.S. to make their home in Rwanda. At that time, construction began on five additional houses for children, a medical clinic, and a fellowship building on 10+ acres of land in Ntarama, Rwanda. Ntarama is the village where Serge lived as a child.

The houses, health clinic, and fellowship hall were completed in June 2016. At that time, the number of children in our care had grown to 96. In 2017, over 2,500 children and adults were treated in our health clinic. In 2022, almost 22,000 children and adults from our community will have been treated in our health clinic.

By 2018, we had 152 children in our care. The first phase of a primary school, Rwanda Children Christian School, was built on our campus, allowing us to offer a quality education in a Christian environment to children from kindergarten through 3rd grade. Our health clinic was expanded, allowing us to provide greater medical services to a community that had been historically underserved with health care.

In 2018, we began a feeding and family transformation program for malnourished children and their parents. Over 71 families participated in this initial feeding program, with many children coming to us near death from starvation.

In mid-2018, we had several job training programs designed to provide the families of at-risk children a path out of crushing poverty. A sewing and handicraft training program was offered to families across our community.

A dream was realized in early 2019 when phase two of Rwanda Children Christian School was completed, allowing us to add grades 4th through 6th, a well-equipped library, and an educational resource center. The number of children in our care reached 390, with 213 children in our Early Childhood Development program and 177 enrolled in Rwanda Children Christian School. Gardens have been planted across our campus, allowing us to produce much of the food we feed our children. A cultural heritage center has been built on our campus, offering our children and community a hands-on encounter with Rwanda’s rich art, music, and dance legacy.

In March 2020, Rwanda’s government imposed a strictly enforced nationwide lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Though necessary to stop the virus, the lockdown caused many people to lose their jobs. Most families in our community lived on daily paid jobs, and the lockdown caused jobs like this to disappear. Without money to purchase food, our neighbors began to starve. In response to this great need, the fantastic generosity of our partners enabled us to provide more than 56,600 pounds of food to over 3,000 of our hungry neighbors — many of them children.

As Rwanda's nationwide lockdown eased, many in our community remained unemployed. We feared most of their jobs would be very slow in returning. Amid this uncertainty, we continued to care for the most vulnerable in our community and support Rwanda Children's kids and their families.

Our team persevered in delivering food and educational materials to our sponsored children, providing tons of food to starving families, and offering 24/7 access to our health center. Our community would have been in a grim situation during this challenging time without the support our partners' generosity enabled us to provide. In September of 2020, with the pandemic subsiding, we reopened Rwanda Children Christian School and our Early Childhood Development programs.

We dedicated a new Fellowship & Worship Center on our campus In June of 2021. This marvelous structure can seat over 1,300 people and serves many valuable purposes. We praise God that our children and others who assemble in the Fellowship & Worship Center have comfortable shelter from rain and the sun.

We now have over 425 children in our care. In September 2023, we began a new school year with over 550 students enrolled in Rwanda Children Christian School and our Early Childhood Development program. In July 2023, we began constructing a high school on our campus. We anticipate completing Rwanda Children Christian High School in late 2023 or early 2024. Our in-country staff, all of whom are Rwandans, has grown to almost 100. All the glory is God's for what we have accomplished in just seven years.

Rwanda Children is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.