Elizabeth Johnson shows some of the books donated to Rwandan librarians recently trained in Kigali.
Just a few months after arriving in Rwanda to focus more on local operations, Grace Rwanda’s leaders are already in the news.
Elizabeth Johnson was celebrated for her literacy promotion work with Grace Rwanda in a feature story in Rwanda’s The New Times newspaper the other day. The paper is the leading English-language daily in the country.
The piece, titled, “Empowering community-based librarians to serve,” focused on a recent workshop to train librarians held at Kigali Public Library. The librarians, brought in from all over the country, were trained in library management, cataloguing, book recording, and filing to improve their skills. The Rwandan government has made increasing literacy in the country a priority.
Grace Rwanda believes that educating librarians is a great step to empowering Rwandans to foster greater literacy among youth. To that end, our organization donated 150 dictionaries to the librarians to support their literacy efforts, and our efforts were noted in the article.
Here’s an excerpt of what else the news story had to say about us:
Elizabeth Mujawamariya-Johnson attended the workshop in her capacity as a member of the Rwandan diaspora working in international development. She recently returned with her husband from Canada for permanent stay in Rwanda.
While still in Canada, she had initiated an organization called Grace Rwanda Society based in Langley, British Columbia in Canada.
In 2014, she decided to create a sister organization that would act as a local NGO, hence the birth of Ineza Foundation.
“In January I moved to Rwanda full-time with my husband to kind of increase our capacity so we can open the office and be able to assemble an operational team here for Ineza Foundation so they can be the ones to implement all the projects for Grace Rwanda Society,” Mujawamariya-Johnson explained.
The foundation recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Youth and ICT to equip 21 community libraries across the country under their respective district youth centers.
The first two beneficiaries were; Muhanga Youth Center in Muhanga district, Southern Province, and Kayonza Youth Center in Kayonza district, Eastern Province, which were equipped with books, computers and e-readers.
Read more of the article on The New Times web site. And check back for more updates from the field as we continue to ramp up our youth literacy work in Rwanda.
You can get regular updates on our work by following @GraceRwanda, liking us on Facebook, adding us in your Google+ circle, and watching our videos on YouTube.
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Grace Rwanda co-founder Elizabeth Johnson continues to inspire others with her dedication to youth literacy in Rwanda.
Recently the Kwantlen Polytechnic University graduate was profiled in the school’s 2014/15 Accountability Plan and Report, singled out with other exceptional grads who are contributing to their community.
In an article titled, “From KPU to Kigali: Langley humanitarian brings literacy to her home country,” the university highlighted Johnson’s “compassionate and international mindset,” and her “efforts to serve humanity and work toward peace.”
Here’s an excerpt:
Elizabeth Johnson is bringing literacy to Rwanda, one book at a time. Through the volunteer-run charity she co-founded after graduating from KPU’s School of Business, Johnson has to date helped renovate a Rwandan school, build six mini school libraries, build a kitchen facility that nourishes over 1,500 students and create two community youth centre libraries that are home to over 15,000 books.
Her next goal is to supply books to all 87,000 students in Rwanda’s Muhanga District, and 20 youth centres across the country. It’s work that takes a village. A Rotarian with Langley Sunrise, Johnson’s literacy efforts have connected local Rotary clubs in Langley and North Delta to multiple clubs in Rwanda. She has also received cross-Canada support from corporate sponsors and individuals.
The causes she supports have incredibly deep, personal roots within Johnson. Born and raised in Rwanda, she lived through the country’s Tutsi genocide in 1994. While there, she served in a variety of important positions with institutions that include the Ministry of Agriculture, Care Australia and World Vision. In 1999, she brought her compassionate and international mindset with her to Canada, where she now speaks across the country to raise awareness about genocide.
Read the full article in the Kwantlen report here, starting on page 33.
You can get regular updates on our work by following @GraceRwanda, liking us on Facebook, adding us in your Google+ circle, and watching our videos on YouTube.
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Grace Rwanda is getting noticed by the government. We’ve been singled out as a notable Canadian international aid project by the Department of Foreign Affairs!
We’re pleased to have been included in the federal government’s online initiative devoted to promoting this year’s International Development Week, held in February.
DFAIT’s feature project, “How Are You Making A Difference?” profiles more than a dozen amazing Canadian non-profits working on humanitarian projects in developing countries.
Have a read of what these inspiring citizens are accomplishing abroad!
You can get regular updates by following @GraceRwanda, liking us on Facebook, adding us in your Google+ circle, and watching our videos on YouTube.
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This summer, the Grace Rwanda team set out to Muhanga, a rural district of 350,000 residents southeast of Rwanda’s capital, Kigali.
We have been working with education officials there on an ambitious new plan. Over the next few years we are commiting to putting a mini-library in every school in the district: about 104 elementary schools and 42 secondary schools.
We want to get a book into the hands of each of Muhanga’s 87,000 students. We plan to start by fundraising to put mini-libraries in all Grades 1 to 3 classrooms, serving more than 43,500 students.
Our goal in Rwanda this summer was to get more students reading immediately. So, to kick off our Muhanga schools campaign, Grace Rwanda created and stocked a new mini-library in a community centre in Nyamabuye, called the Muhanga Youth Friendly Centre.
Youth and students from the area, about 30-50 each day, were using the facility to study and do their homework. Now, with the help of a $6,000 new mini-library, complete with new bookshelves, stacks of new books, dictionaries and periodicals, plus new tables and chairs, they have access to more books and resources to help them succeed.
The District Vice Mayor was on hand to open the new library facility and the community is very excited to move forward with Grace Rwanda on upcoming school library projects.
Check out more fantastic photos of the Muhanga project on our Flickr site.
We’re thrilled to be launching the next phase of our “Let’s Read Together” mini-libraries program this fall. Stay tuned for news about upcoming fundraisers and events to support our exciting new initiative.
Stay in the loop with us by following @GraceRwanda, liking us on Facebook, and visiting Toonies4Change.org.
]]>secondary schools in the Cyuve Sector with a total of $2,000 in school supplies in 2011:
2 wooden bookcases with locking doors for library book storage
1 television set
1 DVD/cd player
1 stereo player with speakers
Teacher manuals w/cd lessons
Student text books
Total per school: $1000.00 USD
We took both head masters to Kigali to purchase their supplies. They were
both so very excited to have this opportunity to stock their schools with better
books and equipment than they had ever hoped for.
Making change in Rwanda
By Manisha Krishnan, North Shore News June 8, 2011
When bad things happen, the natural human instinct is to try to forget about them.
But sometimes, it can be crucial to remember, so that history doesn’t repeat itself. In the case of the Rwandan Genocide, the latter is true.
The Grace Rwanda Society, a B.C.-based non-profit organization that started up last spring, is dedicated to raising awareness about the genocide and supporting the educational system in Rwanda.
“The main reason we’re focusing on education is from the experience of our founders who are both genocide survivors. They strongly believe that part of the reason this happened was because you had a lot of illiteracy and a lot of uneducated young boys who were easily influenced to pick up a machete and go kill people just because they were told to do that,” says Franco Bordignon, a North Vancouver resident and president of Grace Rwanda.
The Rwandan Genocide happened in 1994, as a result of ethnic tensions between the minority Tutsi and the majority Hutu, who were in power at the time. The killings, which are estimated to have reached between 800,000 and 1 million, came after the 1990 civil war between the two groups. Through the use of propaganda, the Hutu-led government encouraged the elimination of Tutsis and pro-peace Hutus, who were said to be dangerous and untrustworthy.
It was an ordeal that changed the lives of Grace Rwanda founders Elizabeth Mujawamaliya Johnson, 43, and Marie Louise Kaligirwa, 44, who both currently reside in Langley, B.C.
Johnson and Kaligirwa were childhood friends who went to the same high school in the small village of Rwinkwavu. After graduation, they had no contact with each other and when the turmoil began, both assumed the other was dead.
In reality, Johnson’s father, two brothers, sister and seven of her nieces and nephews had been killed. But by sheer luck she and her daughter managed to survive, escaping a church filled with thousands of civilians who were almost all murdered.
“In my mind I was dead, because I was counting every second and every minute waiting for a machete, a club or (if lucky), a bullet. I was not expecting to survive,” says Johnson.
Kaligirwa, on the other hand, had married a Hutu and it ended up being her ticket to safety, as he paid off whomever he could to protect her. However, her two brothers and two sisters were all killed and her parents were already dead.
In the late ’90s, both women made their way to Canada, unbeknownst to each other. It wasn’t until Kaligirwa visited Vancouver while she was still living in Calgary that she found out about Johnson. Eventually the two reconnected and Kaligirwa moved to B.C.
“We are now like sisters because we shared the pain. Now we are sharing the joy of going back in Rwanda and help even helping those who killed our own family members,” says Johnson.
When Bordignon first met Johnson and Kaligirwa and heard their stories first-hand, he was deeply moved.
After spending some time together, the three of them began making moves towards forming Grace Rwanda. Last spring they gained charitable status and visited a small school in Rwinkwavu, which they’re committed to helping. So far, the money they’ve raised has gone towards creating an additional eight classrooms at the school.
They’re now working on building toilets — there are currently only eight to serve 1,400 kids — and constructing a new kitchen and library.
“Most of the children, the only meal they have is at the school . . . and that’s why some parents actually send their kids to school because they don’t have to worry about feeding them that day,” says Bordignon, explaining the current kitchen is a tiny, temporary shelter.
Despite all of the hardships that they face, Johnson said that there is still hope in Rwanda.
“We need to move from the wrong committed by our people and prove that we can rebuild our country. Reconciliation is the only remedy to a peaceful mind,” she says.
The society has held several events to reach out to the community, and recently St. Thomas Aquinas High School in North Vancouver donated more than $12,000 to the cause.
Next up, Grace Rwanda is hosting an awareness night featuring the Frontline documentary Ghosts of Rwanda, which examines how the Western world stood by as the massacre took place. Johnson and Kaligirwa will also share their moving stories of survival. The event takes place Sunday, June 12, 7 p.m. at North Lonsdale United Church, 3380 Lonsdale Ave., North Vancouver. Admission is free but donations are welcome. For more information go to www.gracerwanda.org.
© Copyright (c) North Shore News
Read more: http://www.nsnews.com/news/Making+change+Rwanda/4911974/story.html#ixzz1RO9YRqXg
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Amazing Grace Rwanda
Fri Apr 15 2011
Section: B.C.
By Elaine O’Connor
As a Tutsi woman living in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide, Elizabeth Mujawamaliya Johnson lost almost all of her family under horrific circumstances.
It’s the kind of experience that could turn a person bitter. But instead, Johnson drew on her tragic past to create a bright future for the next generation of Rwandans, Hutu and Tutsi alike. She found an inner amazing grace and established an educational charity called Grace Rwanda.
The 44-year-old Langley woman co-founded the charity with fellow Rwandan Marie Louise Kaligirwa, another genocide survivor who lost the majority of her family. Johnson worked for CARE Australia and World Vision in Rwanda before immigrating to Canada in 1999 and Kaligirwa was an accountant working for the U.S. Embassy before moving to Canada in 1998.
The two long-lost school friends immigrated to Canada separately and reconnected in the early 2000s by chance – an acquaintance who knew that Kaligirwa wanted to move from Calgary to Vancouver gave her Johnson’s number.
“I didn’t know she was alive,” Johnson recalled. “We all were just screaming and in tears. It was really like a miracle.”
Once joyfully reunited, the pair began thinking about ways to help rebuild their country.
“We remembered the time it took to go to school every morning in Rwanda. I had to walk almost three hours. When I remembered how hard it was at that time for me, we realized we had to do something because we lived it, we knew the situation our school was in. We were sitting on the ground and in the dust with no windows or doors, walking for hours carrying only one book,” Johnson recalled.
So in 2009 they created Grace Rwanda and began fundraising to build a new school in Johnson’s old hometown of Rwinkwavu, in the eastern province near the border with Tanzania, by donating cement and steel girders to hold up the new roof. Canadian donors assisted in the building of two new classroom buildings, replacing a cramped and crumbling adobe mud brick building, and the building of new latrines, where formerly 1,400 students shared eight stalls.
Since then, they have been fundraising to build a kitchen, dining hall and a library at the school.
Read the full article in The Province
]]>The schoolchildren are singing, dancing and drumming with all their hearts. Hundreds of villagers, their energy palpable, encircle their three visitors in jubilant celebration, even encouraging the “Muzungus” (Westerners) to join them in dance. Gratitude for their new school cannot be contained.
More than 600 students were part of the celebration — with music, dancing and speeches — at the March 26 official announcement of Grace Rwanda’s partnership with the Rwinkwavu School. “Each speaker was so grateful for what Grace Rwanda has done,” says Franco Bordignon, Grace Rwanda’s vice chair. “I didn’t think we had done that much, but that’s not the way they saw it.”
The school that Grace Rwanda is helping to build has 1300 students, half studying in the morning and half in the afternoon. All the children walk to school; there are no buses or parents dropping them off. Franco met one boy whose trip to and from school is 15 km; he starts walking to school at 5 a.m.
Franco traveled to Rwanda with Elizabeth Mujawamaliya Johnson, co-founder of Grace Rwanda and a Rwandan genocide survivor, and her husband Paul, the president of the organization. The welcome celebration, given in their honour, was just one of the highlights from their three weeks in Rwanda. The event was broadcast later that day on Rwandan national news.
During the trip, the board members saw the eight-classroom addition that Grace Rwanda had funded. Although the rooms still lack some finishing touches, the students were able to start taking classes indoors before the start of the rainy season.
On an April 3 community service day, villagers provided volunteer labour to complete the sidewalks around the new addition. Grace Rwanda funds were used to purchase the sand and gravel and to pay the cement masons, but the rest of the labour to build the addition was provided by student and parent volunteers. Young students teamed up to carry buckets of water and sand, motivated by the prospect of new classrooms.
Another purpose of Grace Rwanda’s journey to Rwanda was to meet with Rwinkwavu civic leaders, the school principal and teachers. Together, they discussed the community’s needs and ways Grace Rwanda could continue to assist. A kitchen will be one of the next Grace Rwanda partnership projects. The school’s circa 1940’s kitchen was recently demolished due to safety concerns, with a small temporary one currently taking its place. For most of the children, their only meal is the one the school provides.
The visiting board members also met with Rwandan government and industry leaders. They spoke to representatives of the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Meetings with the Rwandan Development Board and a coffee co-operative representing 1000 farmers may lead to direct Rwandan imports, which will assist Grace Rwanda in fundraising.
Finally, Grace Rwanda needed to finalize arrangements for a Grace Rwanda in-country agent to be in charge of the organization’s Rwanda-side operations. Franco, Elizabeth and Paul are pleased to announce that Kigali-based Apollinaire Kayumba will assume this position, bringing Grace Rwanda one step closer to being able to effectively assist post-genocide communities.
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