REAL entrepreneurs organize event for Drakkar

On Thursday 17 November, an event for Rwandan students took place at Drakkar’s new office. It was organized by a team of five students who were participating in the ‘REAL Entrepreneurial Mindset Training’ where young people learn how to become sucessfull entrepreneurs.

As part of this training, the team had two days to do an assignment for Drakkar. They were requested to put up an event for students and address the challenge of how to make books available and create a culture of reading among students in Rwanda.

The team delivered a great job! They invited more than 20 students to the Drakkar office to discuss and brainstorm about books. The participating students mentioned many barriers for book availability & reading, such as lack of money and time and lack of encouragement. They explained how lecturers often only hand out their notes and do not encourage students to acquire information from books.  Therefore, one solution that came up in the discussion was to establish relationships with the lecturers and sensitize them about the necessity and usefulness of books . Other interesting ideas mentioned were to organize reading or book clubs at universities and student-competitions with prices to reward them.

Another suggestion was to use public speaking events at universities to bring up the importance of reading books. At KIE for example they have such public speaking events every Wednesday. It was also agreed that in order to make students eager to read and use books, one should start at the primary level (for instance by building librairies in schools) and change the culture at a younger age.

To address the issue of costs, one group proposed to introduce a system where students may pay in installments.  Workshops for lecturers, posters & book advertisements in librairies, radio shows, establishing a Rwandan publishing house were other interesting suggestions that came out of the group discussions.

All in all it was a great morning with a lot of energy flowing from all the students. Drakkar wants to thank everyone who participated and particularly the REAL Entrepreneurship Training team for delivering such a great job!