Water activist Venuste Kubwimana founded “A Water Kiosk at School,” a startup which has transformed communities and engaged schools in rural Kenya and Rwanda by improving access to clean water.

Kubwimana was born and brought up in a poor, rural family of seven siblings in the Southern province of Rwanda. After losing much of his family during the Rwandan genocide in 1994, he was left to care for his younger siblings and often had to miss school to fetch water from clean, but distant water sources.

Kubwimana’s experience inspired him to partner with a friend to form the International Transformation Foundation (ITF) – a nonprofit organization that provides youth leadership and entrepreneurship programs to provide jobs and contribute to the development of Rwandan and Kenyan communities.

In 2013, Venuste turned his focus to improving water access in the region. He partnered his organization with Join the Pipe Foundation, launching “A Water Kiosk at School”, a project that involves installing specially designed Dutch tap stations near playgrounds, city centers, parks, schools and bus stations in Kenya in order for people to have access to clean drinking water. To date, the program’s 11 Water Kiosks across Kenya and Rwanda have given 117,858 people access to clean drinking water.

Learn More:

• CGTN Africa, “Rwandan entrepreneur returns home to quench villagers’ thirst,” October 2019
• The Son of Genocide, directed and produced by Milton Guillén ’15 (2020)