My name is Emmy Uwiragiye, I’m 23 years old and I am the 5th child in a family of 7. I’m from the northern province Rwanda. I live in Rulindo district, Kinihira sector.

Before I came to be involved in cricket I used to play rugby and sometime football as goalkeeper In 2015 Landry Rurangwa from the Rwanda Cricket Association came to my dad’s house to get a house to live in - he had come to coach cricket in our region as part of the RCA’s plan to grow cricket in Rwanda. I hadn’t seen cricket before Landry arrived, so when he started, he invited me to go with him to coach. I saw how he was coaching and how the much the players enjoyed the game. Landry started to coach me in the morning and evening with others, and I joined the Sorwathe Cricket Club.

I traveled to Musanze district to study in university, and by good chance I met with CWB in 2018. I was helping RCA with organising food and showing the team where they have to go in Musanze, and I really enjoyed the sessions and games like rapid fire and others. I started to film the sessions, and then started to coach those sessions in schools. Whenever CWB had a project in Msuanze I joined them, to help the team know where they have to go and to improve my coaching skills. I worked with CWB as volunteer for one year, and then became an Ambassador.

My favourite moments in CWB are when we have many students in few hours! I remember when we traveled in Burera district with one of the project teams led by Thom Manning, we travelled to the top of mountain – it was a really long journey. There were so many students there, but we surprised to see they didn’t have ground, they only had basketball pitch! We managed to think on our feet and adapt to use just that pitch for all the students – it was challenging but really enjoyable.

Alongside being an Ambassador, I would like to keep improving the awareness of HIV in community, using the HIV message as we use in CWB. I like them because even when I was an volunteer in community, I was able to use the messages to young people about HIV and to have treatment and in a positive way. So being an Ambassador and delivering our message it is good for me.

Cricket Without Boundaries helps the community because you know when we are talking about HIV and ABCT messages, it is helpful to the young people to know how to prevent HIV, but also for the teachers in the schools, and even for the whole country. So, when we used those messages in the community, it makes people supportive of what we are doing. They like what we do, and so they are more willing to welcome cricket into their community.

My normal routine is to have a daily schedule for the week, coaching 3 hours a day from Monday to Friday in schools, fitting it around my own studies. At the moment because of the COVID-19 restrictions I am coaching just 2 or 3 players at once, following the governments rules. As a group the RCA also has Zoom meetings about how we can continue to be in touch with players

My dream in the future is to have some players in the national team, and to be remembered in CWB and RCA and in the communities as someone who helped develop both players and the community.