Justine Mukangwije has been the Head Teacher at Ruhanga Primary School throughout the time that it has been involved in Wellspring’s Whole School Development Program (WSDP). There has been an obvious transformation in Justine over the past year and a half, not only in her leadership ability and style at Ruhanga, but in her own personal life as well.

Life at home hasn’t always been easy, but Justine says that the things she has learned from Wellspring’s trainings have helped bring a new closeness within her family. Justine is married to a builder and they have four daughters. Three of them are their own, but one is the daughter of Justine’s brother, who they took in when she lost both of her parents. About four years ago, one of Justine’s daughters was in a terrible accident and needed to be hospitalized for two months. Unfortunately, she was never able to fully recover and suffers from slight paralysis in her face. This was a challenging time for their family, but now Justine exclaims, “Because I love my God, my family is so good!”

Justine feels that specifically learning about the value of unity and trying to live it out has brought about a lot of change in her home and at her school. Even one of the teachers at Ruhanga, Maurice, tried to claim that he was really Justine’s first born. “I am most definitely her son,” he said, “maybe not by birth… but by profession!” This attitude is proof of Justine’s leadership. “It feels good to work with a team and see the progress that all of us are making together,” she says. “We are very united here and because of that, teachers love their jobs and are doing their work well – that’s why we are progressing.”

But not everything is going perfectly at Ruhanga. “Leadership is good, but certainly not easy,” Justine reflected as she shared about the struggles the school is still facing with parents in the community. The parenting program has begun at Ruhanga, but relatively few parents are choosing to attend. The majority are not interested in giving time to come to the trainings and so they are still stuck in the mindset that their children are of more use to them doing work around the house or in the field then if they went to school.

This has been a frustration for Justine, her teachers, and the PTA leader, Deogratias, but they are not losing hope. They have seen too much progress to even think about giving up. They know that if they continue to implement the things they are learning, they will keep taking steps forward. They all agreed with Deogratias who said, “The spirit of the people has been spoiled, but we can help to rebuild it!”