Youth First Rwanda
Background
Rwanda has made remarkable social, economic and political progress since the 1994 genocide, gaining a well-deserved reputation for a growing middle class and for fostering entrepreneurship and innovation.
However, significant challenges continue to adversely impact the health, wellbeing and education of its population, particularly youth.
Over half of the Rwandan population lives below the international poverty line, and while primary education rates have improved, less than half of students transition to secondary school. A compilation of factors, including gender based violence, rising rates of teenage pregnancy, drug use, and suicide, impact the day to day life of millions of youth.
Investing in the Wellbeing of Rwandan Youth
Youth First Rwanda is a school-based program designed to impact the social-emotional skills, wellbeing and education of lower secondary school (S-1) students (ages 13-15).
Youth First students build skills that prevent mental health challenges and promote mental wellbeing and resilience, such as identifying inner strengths, building emotion regulation skills, learning effective communication strategies, and setting and working towards personally meaningful goals. Through Youth First, Rwandan youth build the skills necessary to shape not only their own futures, but collaborate with their broader communities to ignite positive social change.
To date, over 35,000 students across 55 schools have participated in the program.
Partnering For Adoption And Scale
In 2025, WorldBeing, along with our local partner, The Wellspring Foundation for Education, launched a 3-year (2025-2028) collaboration with the Rwanda Basic Education Board and the Rwanda Ministry of Education, to implement a multi-faceted plan focused on integration of social-emotional learning (SEL) and wellbeing programming within the government school system for youth nationwide. Planned activities include:
- Establishing clear national social-emotional learning (SEL) guidelines
- Adaptation and implementation of a targeted wellbeing curriculum
- Training school teams on this curriculum
- Increasing SEL awareness and advocacy nationally and throughout the school system
- Strengthening the capacity of the Rwanda Education Board to lead and sustain all SEL initiatives and outcomes.
Program Results
Over the period of 2022-2024, WorldBeing conducted a quasi-experimental trial with students who participated in the Youth First Rwanda program. Using refined measures and a 2-academic-year timeframe, researchers had the opportunity to determine Youth First’s longer-term impacts on wellbeing, gender equality and school belonging. We were excited to learn that over this longer timeframe, results were positive, substantial and statistically significant. The study demonstrated the following key findings:
- Youth First Rwanda (YFR) students experienced a 25 percent increase in their resilience score from baseline to follow-up, compared to a 17 percent increase among comparison school students.
- Compared to comparison school students, YFR students scored 13 percent higher on the gender equality attitudes measure, 7 percent higher on the peer relationships measure, and 7 percent higher on the adolescent wellbeing measure.
- Compared to comparison school students, YFR students scored 15 percent higher on the measure of school belongingness, 13 percent higher on the measure of student-teacher relationships, and were more likely to spend 5 or more hours doing homework in the previous week.
- The rate of grade progression (moving from one grade level to the next) was 5 percent higher among YFR students than comparison students.
In addition, YFR teachers:
- Scored 30 percent higher on the consolidated measure of YFR concepts and 8 percent higher on the consolidated measure of confidence in assets and skills than comparison teachers.
- Scored 11 percent higher on the measure of resilience than comparison teachers.
A full report of the results of this study is available here.
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