Shalom from Agahozo Shalom Youth Village!

Thanks for checking in on my and Jamie’s #Africamp travel blog. If you are wondering how Jamie and I are doing and what life is like for us here, you’re at the right place.

First, you can look at our Google Photo Album to get some of the visuals. Now, let’s see. First let me explain how amazing Agahozo Shalom Youth Village (ASYV) is. ASYV is home to over 500 Rwandan teens who are orphans or considered “at risk.” ASYV has created a true home for these teens, and provides them with family, security, love, belief in themselves, an education, and opportunities to continue their studies after high school.

The last two weeks have been transformative. The love that this place radiates can melt away the cynicism off of the most hardened New Yorker’s heart.

The teens are hungry for knowledge and acceptance, and the village supplies both. Every day Jamie and I witness what a community of teens looks like when being sincere, not aloof, is the default cool. Every day we are blown away by something one or more of the kids says or does.

So what have Jamie and I been doing?

Here’s a list on one foot:

English


We’re teaching one to four English lessons a day to classes of 36 students. We were told when we arrived that mastering English is one of the principle turnkeys to build student confidence and prospects for future employment. The educators are remaking the English curriculum, so we get to make up classes as we go. Jamie and I have taught English through singing “We Shall Overcome” (practicing future tense), teaching the “Cha Cha Slide” dance (Imperative tense and reviewing left and right), and a game similar to hide and seek (learning prepositions), among other interactive lessons. My and Jamie’s extensive time doing experiential camp education is really coming in handy right now.

Professional Skills Workshops

The students are really focused on acquiring practical skills in preparation for college, gap year programs and job opportunities that involve skilled labor (IT, hospitality, modern agriculture, etc.) So we have been tasked with creating a set of workshops for entire grades (128 students) to help. We’ve so far run a workshop on how to use the 5 Paragraph essay for to organize their thoughts, personal story building for college essays, and developing interview skills. At some point we will also help build an entrepreneurship curriculum.

Student Leadership


We’ve been asked to develop a leadership training program for the student government. We were just asked to do this so I don’t know entirely what we’re going to do, but it will involve public speaking, active listening, time management, effective messaging, etc.

Debate Team


Debate team is a big deal in the village and in Rwanda in general. The debate coach, Maxime, asked us to help out the team. Last week was the Kigali (Capital of Rwanda) City championship. The motion was “Rwanda must increase its pace of reducing its dependency on foreign aid,” and ASYV’s team won! Also, in case you are wondering, debate competitions are conducted entirely in English. The national tournament is in March and we are hoping to do well and advance all the way to the East Africa tournament in Kenya!

Young Judaea Group


Not coincidentally, there is a group of 15 teens who are currently on Young Judaea’s Gap Year, Year Course in Israel program (the same one Jamie and I both went on back in the day) who are spending three weeks here at ASYV, learning about the village and Rwanda, and volunteering. We know many of these teens as they were our campers at Camp Tel Yehudah and we’ve enjoyed experiencing the village along with them, helping them lead programs and activities for students and remaining linked to the work we once did in YJ. If you’re wondering why the YJ kids are at this specific village, the answer is that the founder of the village, Anne Heyman, was a YJ alumna who felt that YJ gave her the vision and passion to undertake founding this village (which is modeled after Yemine Orde, an orphan village created in Israel after the Holocaust).

All of the work that we have been doing over the past two weeks has given us a myriad moments upon which to reflect, enjoy and marvel. We already know that by the time we finish our time here at the end of March, we will feel this place woven into us.

What about the Rest of Rwanda? 


So Jamie and I are really busy, like non-stop busy from 8am until 9pm every day. But we’ve also had a chance to get out of village every now and then and the village is an hour or so away from Kigali. We spent a day with the YJ group at the Kigali Genocide Memorial, learning and understanding about the darkness that encapsulated Rwanda in 1994, the shadow of which still looms silently over the country and Rwandan youth. Jamie and I are fortunate that we will be in Kigali on April 7th, to experience the Memorial Day for the genocide. I am especially curious to compare it with Yom HaShoah. During other trips out of the village, we’ve had the chance to eat Rwandan food, shop at small and charming rural markets, ride around Kigali on the bike of motorbikes (it’s how everyone gets around) and see the city. We’ve also hung out with silverback gorillas, but these are all just previews for future blog posts.