Rwanda opens up to Penn

This summer, 14 Penn students spent two weeks at the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village confronting the effects of the Rwandan genocide — and witnessing the unwavering faith and optimism of the orphans left in its wake.

Formed by 1982 College graduate and Moral Voices founder Anne Heyman, the village is modeled after Yemin Orde, an Israeli youth village that was created for the orphans of the Holocaust. The goal of Agahozo-Shalom is to “heal [the orphans’] wounds, dry their tears and give them a future,” according to College sophomore Claire Shimberg, one of the students selected for the trip.

Upon arriving in Rwanda, the Penn students were immediately immersed in the village community. In addition to tutoring the students and helping them with homework, the volunteers shared meals and family time with the children and participated in after-school activities like art, music, Rwandan dance and service work. While the children were in school, the volunteers helped design and build a new canteen where the children could buy snacks and socialize.

Through drawings and conversations, the Rwandan children opened up to the Penn students about their experiences and the fates of their families. “We may not fix their lives, but we can have an interaction that’s human,” Wharton senior Max Cohen said.

Shimberg was inspired by the Rwandans’ emphasis on service and the village’s sense of community, particularly “how caring, open and happy these kids were, even though their lives were worse than anything we could imagine.”

Staffed by Hillel Director Rabbi Mike Uram and University Chaplain Reverend Charles Lattimore Howard, the trip aimed to bring together 14 ethnically and religiously diverse students that would “engage and learn about each others’ faiths” and “be good leaders on campus and execute external educational initiatives,” Uram said. Beyond those criteria, however, “it was more of a random drawing” to decide who went to Rwanda.

For Cohen, the interfaith aspect of the trip was powerful because “you hear perspectives on things that really matter — religion, genocide, America’s role in the world and our roles as individuals.” He hopes to continue the dialogue at Penn and show others the necessity of combating the systemic causes of genocide, like racism and poverty.

Now that all of the trip participants are back on campus, the students hope to raise awareness on campus through several events, like exhibiting trip photos and reenacting a Saturday morning tradition called “Muchaka Muchaka,” in which the entire village runs, sings and dances together as a sign of community.

Before the trip, the group held fundraisers at City Tap House and screened “Hotel Rwanda” to publicize their cause.

Wharton senior and Rwanda trip participant Zack Rosen now hopes to get involved with Moral Voices, whose focus this year is on the genocide in the Congo. He also plans to continue trying to raise funds for the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village throughout the year. “We’re hoping the trip is able to continue next year — it would be very unfortunate for 14 other Penn kids not to have the experiences that we had because of a lack of funding.”

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