Coming out of her shell : How a 25-year-old is unleashing her potential

Juliette Ndamutsa can be characterized as bubbly and chatty but she wasn’t always like this. The 25-year-old describes herself as having been timid and withdrawn who only found comfort in the quiet of their home, relying solely on financial help from others to meet all her needs.

“I was always at home and I never spoke to anyone. I would sit in the house all day, and I felt uncomfortable whenever my mother tried to have a conversation with me.
I didn’t know how one can gain confidence and relied on people’s help, I eventually felt like I was a burden to other people. I had to ask for everything, sometimes waiting for a very long time for my needs to be met, even up to six months, especially slippers, which I couldn’t afford,” she shares.

All this was before she enrolled in Igire Wiyubake Activity, a USAID-funded project, implemented by YWCA in Kicukiro District. Once she joined the program, Juliet says she learned how to save money, mechanisms for HIV prevention and even express herself freely.

“I used to hear about HIV but I was afraid of it and testing for the virus. I wondered what people would say if they heard that I had gone to test for HIV, especially my mother. I didn’t see the need to test for HIV,” she says of her past.

She continuous : “When we began classes, they taught us about safe sex and protection and all I could think about was how promiscuous the topic sounded. But now I have learnt that once someone is confident, they will want to protect themselves, as opposed to just living recklessly and not knowing how to protect themselves. Besides HIV, I had no idea about any other sexually transmitted diseases but I now know and I’m able to educate my peers about them.”

Juliette came to the realization that that despite the age differences among her peers, some even older than her, many don’t have this kind of knowledge because they weren’t lucky to have someone to teach them. She has since made it her mission to share valuable information that she has acquired about HIV prevention.

Through vocational training from Igire Wiyubake, the resident of Gatenga Sector, is already earning some money as a seamstress, part of which she saves every week in a savings group. This for her is something she never thought was possible until she earned her first money.

“Things have changed ; our stories are beginning to change.” she says, adding that“There’s someone I met in the program who was learning hairdressing and she confided in me about how her past upbringing, but recently we met at a wedding and she was the makeup artist for the bridal team. We are grateful that we were taught, besides self-development, our sexual reproductive rights.”

Her message to the youth and participants of Igire Wiyubake is to continue attending safe spaces because there’s a lot to learn there. “Not all of us get the chance to get vocational training like tailoring, but you can learn other life skills.”