FURAHA Jean Marie — A Success Story of Change

FURAHA Jean Marie, is a 56 years old disability activist person with deaf-Blindness come from a family of seven children (four sisters and three boys) with the total number of seven children, He was born in Burundi (Bujumbura) and came to Rwanda in 1995.

He has a general secondary level of education and he is the only Deaf person in the family. During the communication they developed home communication signs. in 2015 he started to lose sight and become totally deaf-Blind .in 2012 her mother died and stay with one parent (father) the movement of Deaf-Blindness in Rwanda started in 20211 with the support of My rights and in 2020 Disability came to support in Advocacy activities, during the beginning Deaf-blindness was the project implemented by Rwanda Union of the blind through the management team.

Jean Marie Furaha was one of the members supported by the project .by the end of November 2018; he was elected by the first General Assembly to be the First Chair Person of the Rwanda Organization of Persons with Deafblindness (ROPDB). It was a difficult time when challenges were abundant to them including communication issues among members of the organization community members, partners, and persons with Deaf-Blindness themselves and no one knew how to deal with issues of persons with Deaf-Blindness.

He started to mobilize funds to train members on tactile sign language as means of communication to build a strong advocacy team. Tactile booklets have been developed, signs have been taught, and articles on tactile sign language have been developed. FURAHA Jean Marie is a strong and capable Leader who originally used sign language in communication but applied a lot of vigor when he learned some tactile signs to Advocate for the rights of Persons with Deaf-Blindness in Rwanda.

He has participated in Workshops Organized by Humanity and Inclusion on leadership ,training of tactile sign language interpreters and some family members, he has been participated in different meetings and conferences organized by ROPDBs local and international partners aiming to joint advocacy.

Under his Leadership, the ROPDB got the staff (Executive Director, project officer, accountant, and cleaner) and the Legal personality to from Rwanda Governance Board(RGB), the organization signed the MoU with friend of handicap and National commission of Human Rights , the organization becomes independent organization from Rwanda Union of the blind, identification of statistics of persons with Deaf-blindness have been done, members and committees members have been trained on leadership and advocacy, he offered the TV talks show to increase the level of awareness on Deaf-Blindness, in 2021 he got the training of nine months on braille at Masaka Resource Center for the Blind ,provision of 27 goats to the poor families of persons with Deaf-blindness in Rusizi District in May 2022 he participates in the first Africa conference on Deaf-Blindness held in Kenya, October 2022 he participated in the General assembly of the world federation of the Deaf-Blin and the African federation of the Deaf-blind.

He ended his mandate by electing the new organizational leadership where he was elected as the Advisor on the board.