26 years after the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, Rwanda’s youth grapple with challenges like genocide ideology, which if not addressed can breed further disruptiveness.
Realising the need in Rwanda, particularly among high school students, for conflict resolution and peace education training, Ian Manzi, an enrichment year programme coordinator at the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village, Derrick Murekezi, a current geophysics PhD student at Georgia Institute of Technology and Julia Lisi, board relations & development assistant at the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village, formed an organisation they call Critical Thinking for P.E.A.C.E (CTP) in 2016.
Starting the project
The trio, all Davis Projects for Peace awardees, believe that the youth hold the key to sustainable development across the world, and have dedicated both their professional and personal lives to empowering young people globally this way.
Executive Director of the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village, Jean-Claude Nkulikiyimfura (left), speaks during the camp alongside co-founder Ian Manzi.
The organisation brings Rwandan youth, of the generation after the Genocide, together for different programmes which promote peace sustainability, social cohesion, empathy, and cultural celebration and preservation.
The idea, according to Manzi, stemmed from their experience as young Rwandans, as recent high school graduates at the time. Having grown up in post-genocide Rwanda, Manzi and Murekezi understood the importance of educating the future generation on what the country had achieved, and what was to be sustained.
"Rwanda’s growth over the last 26 years, whether in the world of economics, infrastructure, health, education, social cohesion and unity and reconciliation, will be completely meaningless if we don’t have a generation that’s ready to carry it on for another 30, 40 and 50 years. The reality of the matter is that our ‘parent generation’ isn’t getting any younger, and as such, we cannot afford to be laid back or disconnected from the spirit of rebuilding and sustaining our nation,” he says.
The annual community service day is a component of the peace camp which gives students hands-on experience in community building.
Each year, CTP hosts a Youth Peace Camp for high school students across Rwanda. Students from all four provinces and Kigali City come together to learn about Rwanda’s history, the role youth can play in building and sustaining peace in their communities, and the importance of using critical thinking when processing information from peers, authority figures, and elders.
"The period during high school,” Manzi explains, "is when every young person is looking for purpose and passion, making it the best time to engage in these lifelong conversations. We aim to teach these future leaders how to employ critical thinking and compassion to solve some of the most pressing challenges in both their personal lives and communities.”
Their first youth camp was held in 2016, and they have since held one each year. The camps are a platform for dialogue, inspiration and empowerment. Initially starting out with a cohort of 32 students, the recent years, due to high demand, have risen the number to around 90 to 95 students per camp.
Across the four cohorts, over 250 students, from across all four provinces of the country have since graduated. They also conduct internal school workshops with individual schools or interschool programmes when the need arises.
Manzi oversees the creation of the educational content of the programme, the implementation and execution of it during the camps and other workshops, as well as its evaluation in the end. For him, working with his co-founders who share a common vision, passion and energy even before any discussions take place, has been empowering and encouraging
Left to right: Ian Manzi, Julia Lisi and Derrick Murekezi
"Our hope is for the programme to increase its impact and expand its reach through graduating students, who are able to become influencers within their community, and create ways to keep the conversation going and engage more youth where they come from,” he says.
During the Youth Peace Camp, speakers challenge students to take what they have learned back to their home communities and work to address identified problems. The annual community service day is a component of the camp which gives our students hands-on experience in community building.
"We also hope to find ways to make the programme logistically and financially sustainable to ensure that it can impact more communities. While we accept around 100 students every year, we usually receive more than 200 applications every year. This tells us that there’s more need for this platform. Maybe a time will come when we can host two camps every year, through collaborations with other organisations,” Manzi adds.