It is Thursday mid-morning when we are ushered into one of the large multi-purpose Event halls at the Infinity Center in Gatsibo District, Eastern Province. A crowd of about fifteen (women interspersed with a few men and youths) are seated on plastic garden chairs, huddled close to each other in circular formation.

They are all listening intently to a matronly brown woman whose speech is complimented with soft gestures. 

The session gradually gets interactive and a little animated, although the voices are still hard to make out. 

In the next room, a similar group of almost same size is seated in same formation, this time listening to a man who is speaking softly from the middle of the group. 

A chart on a nearby wall bears the hand-written message; "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” 

Soon, I learn that this popular African saying rings true about the core activities and mission of Duhumurizanye iwacu, a community based sociotherapy (CBSP) program that operates in Gatsibo and Bugesera districts.

Duhumurizanye iwacu (to comfort each other) is a community of 130 sociotherapists who simply came together in 2011 as a response to the psycho-social problems in their respective communities. 

The 1994 genocide against the Tutsi and other social conflicts before that tore the social fabric of Rwandan society apart, and different approaches have since been tried to heal past pain, restore hope, and build wider social cohesion in communities. 

And community based sociotherapy is just one of them. 

The project works in consortium with Prison Fellowship Rwanda and the Anglican Diocese of Byumba, and is supported by the embassy of the Netherlands in Kigali.

This week, between Monday and Friday, twenty two socio therapists serving six different sectors in Gatsibo district converged at the Infinity Center for a refresher workshop in community based sociotherapy. 

"People who have been serving in CBSP for like two years need to refresh themselves to see if they are still on track, as well give them additional knowledge,” remarked Benjamin Ndizeye, the Community based sociotherapy field coordinator for Gatsibo and Bugersera districts. 

The training is conducted in phases that are facilitated in fifteen sessions conducted in fifteen weeks: 

In these fifteen weeks they go through different phases: safety, trust, care, respect, new orientation, and memory. 

"People who have gone through such atrocities as Rwandans have gone through need to build trust first, because after all they went through they lost trust in human beings.” Ndizeye further explained, adding that "we take groups of 10-15 to make them more dynamic and easier for members to interact closely.” 

"They need safety, and after being secured then they can build trust, and after trust, they can then start taking care of each other. After this stage, they then start respecting themselves, then respecting other people. They need to pass through a process of building back their self esteem which has been destroyed, and the next stage is acquiring new rules of life and new orientation.”

The key target groups that the program targets are: Genocide survivors, prisoners and former prisoners, family members of prisoners, families in conflict, orphans and other vulnerable children, widows/widowers, single mothers, local leaders, refugees, and former-Gacaca judges.

How community based sociotherapy works

"We go into the community and select people who are going to be the drivers of that community in a transformational way. We also work with local and district leaders who orient us about the sectors that are in most need. So at sector level we discuss with the leaders which sectors we can start with,” Ndizeye explained. 

"At cell level, the communities themselves select people who they recommend to come and get our knowledge and after getting this knowledge they can then go and start social therapy groups in their communities. Those people who have been trusted by the community, who are models, who are available – we take them and train them.” 

Once enrolled, the students receive basic training, then a follow up training, and finally an advanced training.

Started in 2005

According to Ndizeye, community based sociotherapy was first introduced in the country in 2005 by the Anglican Diocese of Byumba. 

He adds that in 2008 the program was introduced in Bugesera because of its special history in Rwanda with regards to the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.

"It’s a place that was a nest for the genocide. While the genocide proper occurred in 1994, there it had started as early as 1991 where some people were killed and others burnt alive. There are a lot of people who were raped, orphaned, widowed and all other problems linked to the genocide in Bugesera.”

That time, the project was conducted under the auspices of an organization called Faith Victory Association. 

"After the project ended people who were trained in that period and acquired the knowledge decided to come together and form an organization called Duhumurizanye Iwacu Rwanda.”

In 2012 the organization acquired legal documents, and in 2013, Community Based Sociotherapy decided to partner with other organizations to make a consortium. 

Ndizeye returns to the issue of why Bugesera and Gatsibo were particularly favored for the project. 

"In the 1950s and 60s there was mass migration of Tutsis who were coming from different parts of the country who were simply dumped in Bugesera so that they could die from Tsetse flies. So in 1994 the killings in Bugesera were on a massive scale because it was well known as a place with a large population of Tutsis concentrated in one small area.

In Gatsibo there is a sector called Murambi, which was a commune in the former government. The Burgomaster of Murambi in that period was one of the people who planned the genocide. He committed genocide and killed many people in that period. 

That means that Gatsibo also has many survivors of genocide and also a lot of perpetrators.”

The organization worked together with the Ministry of Justice, the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission, and CNLG in selecting the two districts.

New lease of life:

Most of the sociotherapists I talked to likened the experience of socio therapy to being born again, starting life anew.

Ruhumuriza Jean Baptiste – secretary socio therapists:

"Before I joined this group I was not open –I was not open to forgiveness, I was not open to sharing with others, but after coming here I became more open and also started forgiving,” explained Ruhumuza Jean Baptiste, the secretary for the group. 

He notes that one of the biggest achievements of the program to the community is that it has improved family cohesion. "Many people come for sociotherapy with marital problems arising from the fact that they are not legally married. When they attend the program, most times it softens the men’s hearts and they go and consummate their marriage and after that, family conflicts are usually ended. 

He also cherishes the fact that they are now one big family of socio therapists – "whereby we visit and help each other, and attend each other’s weddings and burials.”

"In genocide I was only 10 years old. I was frustrated to hear that my father contributed to genocide and stolen property from my friends’ parents. I was very worried about what we should pay back so that our family’s crime would be deleted for good. With my request due to sociotherapy impact, my father who had locked this issue somewhere in his heart accepted to accompany me asking for forgiveness in the name of the family. I took one cow my father had given me to the survivors for payment but the survivor told us that what he was in need of was not the cow nor the money rather restoring their shattered relationship,” explained another. 

"Some people had given up the will to live – no need to bathe and wash, no need to work, because they had worked a lot and then everything was destroyed in the war. Others saw no need to send their children to school. Now they cover each other’s backs in times of need – a mattress here, a couple of iron sheets there … they visit each other regularly and also invite other community members to join them on these visits and convince them that they too can build their own peace from within the community. 

You see cases of people starting to rebuild their houses, to buy a goat, start cultivation, go back to school for adult literacy classes … and all this because of sociotherapy,” Ndizeye concluded. 

This bottom-up approach succeeds in shooting several birds with one stone; 

Facilitating the healing process for the hurting, more cordial relationships at the community level, reconciliation, reduction in social vices like alcoholism and drug abuse, less stigmatization, and improved problem-solving skills, among others. 

The wider goal of the program is to inform national and international audiences about the experiences and results of sociotherapy, with the aim of mainstreaming it within existing institutions in the country. 

Consequently, it hopes to contribute to the development of a Great Lakes Consortium of organizations that implement sociotherapy.