[11]I have spent the past week in Kigali, working with Eugene Gatari [12] and the rest of our local staff to launch the USAID/IREX Youth for Change: Building Peace in Rwandan Communities Program (Y4C) [13]. Rwanda figured prominently in my graduate school courses on conflict and development, so I was eager to see for myself the country I had read and written so much about. The trip made Rwanda’s tragic recent history very real for me. I was struck by the fact that virtually everyone I talked to or passed on the street had been touched by the horrors of the 1994 genocide, yet they were determined not only to survive but to thrive – and to help their communities and their country do the same.
One of the first things I noticed about Rwanda was its large youth population. The Y4C project is designed to bring together a diverse group of youth leaders from across the country for a training program that will not only give them valuable leadership and conflict mitigation skills, but also foster interaction among youth leaders so that they come to view their peers from different backgrounds as individuals rather than as members of “the other.” In other words, they will form positive relationships based on trust and mutual understanding. While this sounds good in theory, I was not sure how it would work given the reality of Rwanda today. I found myself wondering what all these youth – who were children or were not even born during the genocide – really think about their peers from other backgrounds. What if the older generation has passed on the animosities that made the genocide possible to the younger generation? What if the genocide so thoroughly destroyed the fabric of Rwandan society that youth from different backgrounds are unable to trust each other?
Over the course of my trip, I was inspired by examples of youth working together to improve their lives and their communities. For example, thousands of youth from different backgrounds have joined “Never Again [14]” clubs and associations across Rwanda to generate ideas and implement activities that build peace. One such club we visited was planning to raise and sell rabbits to generate income for its members. When we asked the leader how the profits would be distributed, he explained that the club knew which members were the poorest because they could not even afford school supplies, and these members would be the first to receive a share of the profits – based not on their background but rather on their demonstrated need. His response gave me hope that Rwandan youth can see beyond the divisions of the past and work together toward a prosperous future.
Shannon Bruder [15] is a Program Officer at IREX