Posts from September, 2008
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Children (and their parents) help raise a village in Africa
A chance meeting with the wife of the CEO of her husband’s employer has drawn Collins Drive resident Susanne Biancamano into an effort to build a school for impoverished children halfway around the world.
Since meeting Anne Heyman, wife of Liquidnet Holdings CEO Seth Merrin, two years ago, Ms. Biancamano has organized fundraisers, collected good to send to Rwandan children and traveled to Rwanda in the summer to see the Agahozo Shalom Youth Village in development.
”I was invited to go to Rwanda by Anne along with five other people who are working on the project to see ASYV this July,” she said. “It was a remarkable life changing trip. I learned the history of the country and visited genocide memorial sites and a children’s orphanage.”
Ms. Biancamano’s week-long trip began July 7th.
”I saw poverty you only read about in magazines and witnessed death on a massive scale that I only visit in my worst nightmares,” she said. “I also witnessed hope, love and commitment as I saw the progress of this miraculous village and met people who truly are making a difference in the world.”
The Agahozo Shalom Youth Village, modeled after the Yemin Orde Village built in Israel after the Holocaust, is scheduled to open in November. It will have 32 children’s houses, each housing 16 children with a house mother. There will be a dinning hall with seating for 800, classrooms, a library, a chapel and an infirmary.
According to the youth village’s Web site, Agahozo Shalom.com, the project started after Ms. Heyman met Paul Rusesabagina, subject of the movie “Hotel Rwanda,” the story of his efforts to protect his family and friends during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Ms. Heyman asked Mr. Rusesabinga what the country needed and he said the country needed schools: with 1.2 million orphans – 15 percent of the country’s population — he said helping the children was the greatest need.
Ms. Heyman recognized the similar challenge that Israel faced after World War II, when there had been a large influx of orphans from the Holocaust. To care for these traumatized youth, Israel built residential living communities called youth villages, a model she copied to try in Rwanda.
She met with officials at the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), an international humanitarian organization, and the ASYV is now a special project of JDC’s international development program.
”I volunteered to work on the outreach committee,” Ms. Biancamano said. “This project is immense and will change the future of the country.”
Ms. Biancamano organized a fundraising event in April, with the help of Sherrie Spaltoff, Linda McGill, Mary Thomson, Lori Thole, Lisa Claus and Cynthia Neydon. The Africa-themed cocktail party drew 80 people and raised more than $6,000.
”We served only African food and drinks,” Ms. Binacamano said. She noted Ms. Spaltoff baked cookies shaped like huts as favors and her husband arranged for a South African wine vendor to donate 23 cases of red and white wine.
”I gave a 20-minute talk about Rwanda and showed a short video. The response was heart warming,” she said.
She said, thanks to the April event, a neighborhood clothing drive held in the summer was also very successful.
”Thanks to the children who delivered the flyers to the message in bulletins, e-mails and word of mouth, Hillsborough is making a difference a half a world away,” she said. “Hillsborough truly is a community with a big heart.”