OUR STORY

The name Urukundo was inspired from our first product Urukundo Board Game & Information Package, which is a Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) availing information board game whose aim is to provide friendly, safe, trustful and evidence based SRH information to young people in the Rwandan community.

OCTOBER 2019

ORIGIN OF THE NAME URUKUNDO?

We thought of what motivates us to wake up in the morning and serve our community and our country, it is “Urukundo”, love in English. The love that we have for our young sisters and brothers, our elders and our country as a whole push us to coming up with more friendly, innovative and interactive platforms to help them get evidence based information.

DECEMBER 2019

Medical students (now Doctors) and founders of URUKUNDO Initiative

As Founders, we joined together as a study group first, but then we decided not to limit our skills to only reading medicine. We decided to apply what we learn in class into more creative and innovative ways. So far, we came with Urukundo Board Game and through all the journey of developing the game, the team join together to perfecting their skills. It is not always easy, but yet not impossible to work hard for one’s future career and building a successful organization. There were sleepless nights and getting so cold on rainy days while working, but everything was worthy it!

MARCH 2020

IN TIME OF CRISIS, ABANDON? OR KEEP WORKING AND DREAMING HIGHER?

COVID-19 Pandemic affected our enterprise in various way. First in line of complying with government measure to prevent the spread of infection we were unable to conduct physical meeting with our key partners as well as beneficiaries. We were expecting to forge many partnerships with various organizations in order to extend our market. Lockdown forced us not meeting with those aforementioned beneficiaries and partners.

We didn’t give up easily, we kept on working remotely. We organized online meetings with our partners and mentors, we continued mass production of our game product online and came up with other innovative educative ways of giving evidence-based information on Sexual and Reproductive Health.

JUNE 2020

URUKUNDO Initiative, not only an organization but a family

Starting a social enterprise without investment and being students is hard, so we had to take advantage of all the free opportunities we could get. We decided to bootstrap and raise money from ourselves in order to get our first product prototype and along the way, we even called upon the help and support from our friends and family. It was so inspiring how everyone believed in us and supported our ideas.

NOVEMBER 2020

URUKUNDO Life Skills BOARD GAME Launch

After a long period of waiting and gathering insights from young people, experts and relevant institutions, we were so excited to launch the finalized and ready URUKUNDO Board Game and Information packages which are stunning until now!

DECEMBER 2020

Talking of the URUKUNDO Life Skills BOARD GAME mobile app

IBS Rwanda knocked on our door with good news! We won the 2^nd Cohort Demo Day and emerged the second best startup. It was like a fuel to the engine and a push to continue thinking out of the box to serve Rwandan young people!

JANUARY 2021

WELCOME TO SII Rwanda

The email from Social Impact Incubator (SII) found us well that morning and it was refreshing that we were selected for the second cohort of SII Rwanda after a very long and competitive selection process where only a few exceptional organizations were selected.

JANUARY 2021

Greetings from the MINIYOUTH! you won the Young Entrepreneurs Resilience Award!

COVID-19 pressed a great challenge on sexual reproductive health (SRH) including but not limited to teenage pregnancy, gender based violence and unsafe abortion. As a response to COVID-19’s effect of the widened information gap on SRH, we started a journey of developing URUKUNDO Board Game Mobile App and we appreciated a stone of support from the Ministry of Youth.

JANUARY 2022

Entering the Segal Family Foundation family!

The Segal Family Foundation checked on us with good news. URUKUNDO Initiative won the SII (Social Impact Incubator) Bridge Award.

FEBRUARY 2022

URUKUNDO Initiative is now among the Stars in Global Health!

Stars in Global Health (Stars) program at Grand Challenges Canada partnered with us to explore transformative ideas at proof-of-concept that bring together scientific and technical, social and business innovation, to address some of the most pressing global health challenges, that is teenage pregnancies. The URUKUNDO Life Skills BOARD GAME is now one of the Bold Ideas with Big Impact globally.

FEBRUARY 2022

Welcome to the URUKUNDO Life Skills BOARD GAME Center!

We are bringing the FUN close to you!! URUKUNDO Life Skills BOARD GAME Center is now open. Come and play the game while learning and having fun, we are open every day from 8:00 am – 5:00 pm at our main office Gilugali House, 1st Floor — KG 11 Avenue Remera, Kigali – Rwanda. It is always URUKUNDO Life Skills BOARD GAME …where fun and learning meet.

JULY 2022

Hey there! you won the UNFPA Global Joint Innovation Challenge!

Great news from the headquarters of UNFPA. We won the Global Joint Innovation Challenge by United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), International Trade Center (ITC) and International Telecommunication Union (ITU). This further confirmed our URUKUNDO Life Skills BOARD GAME as an international multi-awards winning fun and learning blend from Rwanda. We are excited for thousands of youth, women and girls who will get impacted by the game thanks to this challenge.