November 2, 2007
By Julie Jacobs
lifestyles Magazine

It all began on November 14, 2005, with a Hillel-sponsored lecture at Tufts University, where Paul Rusesabagina spoke about the 1994 genocide in his native country of Rwanda. Rusesabagina’s valiant effort, to protect Tutsi refugees from the Hutu militia by housing them in the hotel he managed, was depicted in the Oscar-nominated film Hotel Rwanda.

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By Rob Eshman, Editor-in-Chief
October 19, 2007
JewishJournal.com

If I wanted the kind of office where visitors shut the door and cry, I’d have become a rabbi. Or a therapist. Or an agent.

That’s why it caught me off guard when a woman named Anne Heyman sat down across from me and started, well, crying.

Heyman was in town last week to raise money and awareness for the Agahozo Shalom Youth Village in Rwanda. Moved to ease the plight of 1.2 million children left orphaned by the 1994 Rwandan genocide, she came up with the idea of emulating the Yemin Orde Youth Village in Israel, the model by which Israel absorbed, raised and educated hundreds of post-Holocaust Jewish orphans.

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Sunday, August, 19, 2007
The Sunday Times
Kigali Rwanda

While in Rwanda for the ASYV Ground Breaking, Anne Heyman, ASYV Founder and the Israeli Ambassador to Rwanda, Yaacov Amitai were received by H. E. President Paul Kagame. After hearing of the benefits of the village for his country and the orphaned children of Rwanda, he pledged his personal support of the project. Also accompanying Anne and Ambassador Amitai was Seth Merrin, CEO, Liquidnet Holdings, Inc., an american businessman and Anne’s husband, Sifa Nsengimana, Executive Director, ASYV (not pictured) and Gideon Herscher, JDC (not pictured).

By Stephanie L. Freid
August 26, 2007
ISRAEL21c

In 2005 Anne Heyman sent an e-mail message from her Manhattan office to Israel’s director of the Yemin Orde Youth Village. “You don’t know me,” the message began “but I hope you might be able to help me in my mission.”

Said mission was to build a youth village in Rwanda for children orphaned during the late ’90s genocide and model it after the Yemin Orde Youth orphanage in Haifa, Israel.

Yemin Orde director Haim Peeri was forthcoming. He met with Heyman, offered advice and presented a model she could emulate. A mere two years later, Heyman almost had to pinch herself as she stood alongside international dignitaries, Rwandan orphans and Yemin Orde delegates at the groundbreaking ceremony for Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village last week in Rubono, Rwanda.

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August 16, 2007
Rwanda, Africa (PRWeb)

On August 17, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) will dedicate the future site of the Agahozo Shalom Youth Village (ASYV) in Rwanda to help provide not only a home, but opportunity and hope for these future leaders. The Village will incorporate a protected residential environment and a high school for 500 Rwandan orphans and provide a secure community including innovative educational programs, sports, a health clinic and psychological services. Both the Israeli and American ambassadors along with the Governor of the Eastern District, the Hon. Theoneste Mutsindashyaka and other government Ministers are expected to attend.

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August 14, 2007
Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA)

A youth village to serve 500 impoverished Rwandan orphans will be dedicated this week by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.

The village is the brainchild of Anne Heyman, a South African-born New York lawyer who was moved to help after learning that 15 percent of Rwandan children are orphans due to genocide.

The JDC will dedicate the future site of the Agahozo Shalom Youth Village on Friday.

“[Jews] have a collective experience with the Rwandans, having come through genocide,” said Will Recant, the JDC’s assistant executive vice president.. “We’re very much invested in the long-term, sustainable commitment to make this happen.”

The village will provide Rwandan orphans, many them with HIV/AIDS, with a “safe, structured environment with a rich community life where children are exposed to all elements of parental and familial normalcy, thereby providing wholeness in the wake of destruction,” the JDC said in its overview of the village.

Agahozo, Kinyarwandan for “the place where tears are dried,” is modeled after the Youth Aliyah Village of Yemin Orde that housed Holocaust orphans in 1953.

Recant said numerous high-ranking political and business leaders are supporting the village, which is slated to open in 2009.

By Stephanie Freid
December 25, 2006
Israel21c

Jean-Pierre Nkuranga was twenty in 1994 when he hid in the bushes outside his home in Rwanda and watched helplessly as Hutu militiamen ruthlessly attacked his family members. He lost four siblings and both parents in the carnage that was later known as Rwanda’s genocide.

“Children heads of household were common - some as young as ten. The kids would put together households of other kids and live in the streets or build tent camps with leaves and mud.” Nkuranga said.

The 1994 Rwandan genocide left over 800,000 Tutsis dead. One of the most devastating aftermaths of the tragedy was the approximately 1,200,000 children - almost 15% of the Rwandan population - who became instant orphans and lost their homes forever. Nkuranga became the parent to his four remaining siblings in the aftermath of the violence and he eventually took in six additional neighboring children.

Overcome by the enormity of loss, Nkuranga vowed to help build a future for the children orphaned in Rwanda. And today, he’s beginning to achieve that goal with the help of Israel.

Nkuranga was part of a ten-person delegation of Rwandan youth experts who recently spenta week at the Yemin Orde Youth Village south of Haifa in order to gain tools for opening the Agahozo-Shalom Village in Rwanda, which will be modeled after Yemin Orde.

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