 My name is Erika Gattekamatasi. I am 25 years old. I am a brilliant living in Rwanda. I came to Rwanda in 2015 after the political crisis that took place in my country. I asked myself one question, what do I have in my hands that I can use to reach out to the community? And yeah, I discovered that one thing I could use to make a difference in my community was English. I was able to speak and write English as well as teach children how to read. So I called two children at home and I asked them if they could read and write English, and they weren't able to do so, and so I invited them to come twice a week to my house. And on the far end of our house, I started teaching children how to read and write English and that is how the project began. Now we run our own children's community centre with a group of other young people from Burundi and from Rwanda and so we teach children. The first thing we do is we teach children how to read and write English. We help over 70 children in the community. We also sponsor about five children to school through funds that come from different young people. The crisis happened in Burundi. I was just finishing my university and I was hoping to join the workforce in Burundi and be part of developing it but unfortunately the crisis broke and we had to move to Rwanda. It was very devastating for me because I was really passionate about my country and I wanted to be part of the young people who made a difference in Burundi but yeah, I found myself here so everything basically stopped. We lost our homes. I came to Rwanda when I didn't know anybody but thank God that we found people who were willing to host us even if they didn't know us and we have grown and despite the challenges we've been able to... we're still living here. I don't know what to say. Let's avoid it. The challenge we face really is sustainability. When we began we thought it was just going to be something that we do to help the community but we realised for it to keep going and for us to keep paying the rent because we now rent a house which is our children's centre and to pay transport for the volunteers and to keep them motivated we thought of coming up with income generating activities that can help support that. So that has been one of our biggest challenges and we are currently launching and working on our first income generating activity that is going to help us support the volunteers that also help us put back some money to pay the rent of the house that we are using. In the next two years I see our project becoming more of a social enterprise where young people can have income generating activities but can also give back to the community. Not just give back as a side thing but take their time to give back as they are also making money through the process. If you are not in your home country it doesn't mean that you can't do anything to give back in the community and you can start from the simplest things you have. Whatever skill you have can be used to reach out to somebody in your community. You don't have to wait for somebody to find you to begin doing something. You can begin where you are with what you have.