About the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village

After sitting through a lecture last November about the devastating 1994 Rwandan genocide, Anne Heyman, a lawyer and mother of three from New York, could not get the stark statistics she learned that night out of her mind: some 1.2 million children, almost 15% of the Rwandan population, had been orphaned as a result of the genocide.

Anne walked out of the lecture that autumn evening one year ago and hasn’t let a day go by without thinking about those Rwandan children. In just a matter of months, she conceived and developed the Agohozo-Shalom Youth Village (ASYV). The village will serve as a residential high school for 500 Rwandan orphans, offering a safe haven from abuse and exploitation, as well as a springboard to cultivate a future cadre of educated and motivated Rwandans prepared to shape their country’s future.

Recently land was secured for the establishment of ASYV -— no small task considering the amount of red tape. The project is moving forward at a rapid pace because of Anne’s tenacity, commitment and the strategic partnerships she has developed with the JDC, Rwandan professionals, and the Yemin Orde Youth Village in Israel. ASYV is actually based on the model of the Israeli Youth Aliyah Village of Yemin Orde which was established in 1953 to accommodate Holocaust orphans and immigrant children.

Anne is originally from South Africa furthering the project’s power, due in part to its international scope. She has hand-picked a seasoned team of passionate and experienced professionals from America, Israel and Rwanda. In order to ensure that the Village lives up to its ambitious vision, Anne, together with Rwandan professionals, also plans to establish a Rwandan non-profit to provide local oversight and quality control.

One of the most poignant and potentially impactful aspects of the project is the team of Ethiopian Jews - most of whom arrived in Israel as “orphans of circumstance” having left their parents in Ethiopia - to serve as the trainers and teachers for this very unique model of education and development. These Ethiopian-Israeli immigrants understand first hand the hardship their African neighbors are experiencing — many of them walked through the Sudan to escape civil war, lived in refugee camps and witnessed loved ones die along the way. Upon their arrival in Israel, some found themselves orphaned and it was their experience at the Yemin Orde Youth Village that gave them a second chance at life.

Anne encapsulates the uniqueness of this project: “This project is important because it has so many levels of impact: On the lives of Rwandan children who would otherwise not have a future; on the future of Rwanda which stands to gain so much from a Village that graduates children committed to making a difference in their communities, on Africa’s perception of Israel, on the self-perception of Ethiopian-born Israelis and on the Israeli community’s perception of these Ethiopian-born Israelis as givers rather than takers. It also provides many opportunities for those in the States - from corporate America to school children - to make a difference in a truly meaningful way.”

Most importantly, Rwandans themselves, on every level — from local officials to government ministers — have embraced the philosophy behind the Village.

Ultimately, every child who enters the village will be told: “Yes, you have suffered terribly in your life but you are here because there is a special role for you in this world. You will achieve greatness. You will make a difference in the lives of others. You will make sure that what has happened to you does not happen to your children,” explains Anne.

Press & Publicity

In war-torn Africa, a Jewish home emerges

By Stacey Palevsky
June 15, 2007
Jewish News Weekly

More than 1 million children in Rwanda are orphans.

The magnitude size of that statistic — equal to 15 percent of the nation’s population — took Anne Heyman’s breath away.

She wondered: Could she help? And if she did, could she weave Jewish values into her efforts?

Yes and yes.

Last year, Heyman founded the Agahozo Shalom Youth Village, which is slated to open its doors to Rwanda’s teenage orphans in 2008.

The youth village will be a home for about 125 teenagers, all of whom have lost their parents to the Rwandan genocide or AIDS. Eventually, the village’s population could swell to 500.

But Heyman’s project is not simply international aid work. She has put a Jewish face on the project, modeling it after a similar, successful program in Israel.

“I want people to look at Israel and say: What do they do that is of value to the world?” she said during a presentation at the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation on Monday, June 11. It was the first stop on her cross-country campaign, the goal of which is to raise $10 million by next year.

“There is a campaign to demonize Israel. And we can fight that in a really positive way,” Heyman said.

[To read more of this article, download the PDF.]

Survivors of Rwandan Genocide Learn From Ethiopian Israelis

By Eric Silver
February 5, 2007
The Jerusalem Report

Fifteen young Ethiopian Jews are training to use their own experience as displaced Africans successfully absorbed into Israeli society to help rehabilitate some of the 1.2 million orphans of the Rwandan genocide. In 1994, members of the dominant Hutu community in the former Belgian colony massacred more than 800,000 of the minority Tutsi.

The 15 are among nearly 2,000 Ethiopians who have graduated since 1981 from Yemin Orde, an innovative youth village in western Galilee that houses more than 500 immigrant and at-risk children. Chaim Peri, Yemin Orde’s veteran principal, told The Report, “Their return to Africa on a life-saving mission is significant not only in itself, but for what it does for their selfesteem.”

The Ethiopian Israelis will go to Rwanda as mentors to a Rwandan charity which is setting up a village, modeled on Yemin Orde, in the central African state. Ten Rwandan educators and social workers completed an intensive week of workshops at Yemin Orde in December.

Isachar Mekonen, who immigrated to Israel with his parents as a 6-year-old in 1972 and served as a major in the paratroops, will lead the Israeli mission. “When you feel good,” he said, “when you feel strong, you can make another people feel strong. I feel I can help the kids who went through the genocide.”

Mekonen, now a father of three and service manager in the Israel Electric Corporation, graduated high school in 1985 after four years at Yemin Orde. The school aims to fill the scholastic gaps of underprivileged children, Peri explained, and give them what their environment cannot provide. “We focus on telling them how important they are, that they are not inferior, that they are destined for greatness.”

[To read more of this article, download the PDF.]

Ethiopian Israelis provide training for Rwandan youth village

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.

[To read more of this article, download the PDF.]

Donate to the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village

The Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village is an attempt to deal with the devastating aftermath of the Rwandan genocide. In addition to meeting physical, emotional and academic needs, ASYV’s philosophy is aimed at producing young adults who are committed to making their community and the world a better place.

Donate online

You can make an online donation via the JDC’s “Open Mailbox” secure online system.

Donate by mail

JDC: JDC-IDP: ASYV Rwanda
132 East 43rd Street
P.O. Box 530
New York, NY 10017

Please make your personal check payable to: “JDC-IDP: ASYV Rwanda”.

Donate by phone

Credit card donations may also be made by phone. Please call 212-687-6200 to contribute.

Contact ASYV

You can contact us by emailing us at info@agahozo-shalom.org

or write to us at:

The Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village
P.O. Box 1884
Livingston, NJ 07039

coming soon….

Genocide in Rwanda

Nearly one million people were murdered in 100 days in 1994. Hundreds of thousands of survivors became traumatized and the country was left in ruins. As a direct aftermath of the genocide, over 1.2 million children remain orphaned today — forever robbed of their parents, communities, homes, and any hope for a viable future.

Life disrupted…Life restored

The Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village (ASYV) aims to create a safe and structured community for orphaned children in Rwanda. A place where these traumatized youth can “dry their tears” (Agahozo) and “live in peace” (Shalom).

Click on the video to play.

Within this environment, the “rhythm of life” will be restored: a child rises from his/her bed in the morning, eats breakfast with siblings and “parents,” walks to school and back home in the afternoon.

The result is healthy adults who are not only able to care for themselves and their families, but who are committed to making their community and the world a better place.