How BAHO Center Ltd saves environment, transforms lives of youth with disabilities through wastes recycling

By Elias Hakizimana

Be-Ambassador of Hope (BAHO) Center is an environment friendly organization operating in Rwanda with core mission to save the nature and lives through training children and youth in waste recycling.

The center also offers different services ranging from home decor, gardening and landscaping, community services, recycled art, ceramic art, painting and drawing, art and craft training among others.

Jean Bosco Musanganya, founder and Managing Director of BAHO Center Ltd told The Inspirer that they preferred to equip vulnerable people such as youth and children with disabilities with recycled art skills so that they change both health and wealth status.

“Some of our beneficiaries have physical disabilities and their hands and fingers need physio-therapy to enable them touching different objects. When they are doing practices in recycled arts and painting, such an exercise heals them gradually and over the time they can produce good artistic products.” Musanganya said.

He said that they decided to collect different plastic wastes, textile wastes and other harmful objects to the environment to help communities to touch money.

“We know that plastic wastes are bad on soil, through recycling them, we wanted to change the mindset of people so that they know that wastes can be productive for income generation. We produce giraffe, pig, and other images of art works through recycled plastic bottles and the final products (art works) are good teaching materials that can be sold. We also teach youth to recycle wasted boxes and papers into good flower vases.” Musanganya explained.  

After training beneficiaries, the center links them with markets to sell the final products.

Musanganya said that he plans to teach more communities about the role of environment protection through wastes collection and recycling.

“We consider wastes as wealth; we want to teach other communities apart from youth and children with disabilities.

BAHO Center has recently signed a partnership with a local organization that advocates and educates children with disabilities in Kicukiro district where they train them in recycled art.

The philosophy behind the partnership

“First and foremost, Art is imagination and it enables a child to think beyond when he/she is designing an art work. Most of them have physical disabilities and we try to enable their bodies, muscles to do movements.” Musanganya said.

Future dreams

BAHO Center Ltd looks on a good plan to build a big hub to help youth and children with disabilities and other vulnerable communities to produce and gather their art work in a gallery.

“We want to establish a hub to follow up the impacts of what we taught these children. We will start with those who are being mentored and we plan to gather them in an art gallery and create a network of them with other people from developed countries.” He noted.

Testimony 

Patience Irafasha, one of children with intellectual disabilities from Kanombe, Kicukiro district who is among the beneficiaries of BAHO Center Ltd said that she gained a lot of skills and her fingers can touch very well when she is producing art works at school. “I can use my hands to paint.

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