In partnership with JDC, I recently had the opportunity to participate in a cultural exchange in Rwanda, where we engaged in exploration of Rwanda’s rich history and integrated ourselves into the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village (ASYV). This immersive experience was an incredible opportunity to interact with the culture directly, and immerse myself into the daily lives of the students at ASYV.

Given my work in leadership development, when I decided to take this trip to Rwanda, I had three primary concepts I wanted to observe and research during this exchange: resilience, trust, and community building. Beyond the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi (referenced hereafter as “The Genocide”), I was fairly unfamiliar with Rwanda. It was incredible to observe the beautiful culture of today juxtaposed with many painful elements of the past. ASYV is a non-profit community focused on providing vulnerable and orphaned youth in Rwanda the necessary healing, education, community, and empowerment to contribute to a better world. Through my time in Rwanda, and especially at ASYV, I uncovered a number of key findings that I’m excited to bring back to my own personal and professional community.

 

Concept #1: TRUST

During The Genocide, neighbor quite literally turned against neighbor in the most brutal and horrific ways. One of the most striking comments I heard at the Kigali Genocide Memorial was that many Rwandans became unaware of who to trust – people with whom they lived and worked fell prey to propaganda and their behavior turned into vicious attacks. How can one recover from that, and learn to trust anyone after having that trust be broken in the most shocking way?

At ASYV, students are broken up into “families” and live in homes with their brothers or sisters and a Mama. They live among 19 – 24 other students for four years, each with different roles and responsibilities in the house. I had conversations with the students about how they learned to trust each other, and how they handled conflict living in such close quarters. One student spoke about how when there is a conflict, they take it upon themselves to resolve it through dialogue, often without an older sibling (ASYV alumnus) or Mama present. One student mentioned that when they do something wrong they must apologize. I asked what would happen if they didn’t mean the apology, or they weren’t truly sorry. The student responded that false apologies are obvious; people know when you aren’t being genuine, and that even if an action was unintentional it still had a negative impact on the person. The intention does not matter; if someone is upset, it’s the impact that’s most important. Navigating conflict conversations like this can spur even more trusting relationships.

ASYV uses a concept called Trust Based Relational Intervention (TBRI) to support the students. I’m excited to do even more research into this theory, and from my understanding it underscores that trust building is the foundational component to healing trauma. For example, many of my students sat in the same seats for every meal. I asked a “cousin” (a fellowship participant living and working with the students at ASYV for a one-year term) about this, and if there was a desire to switch things up. The cousin mentioned that allowing this behavior to happen, at least for now for these first year students, is intentional; their minds are still working to quiet past traumas, and certain routines, even something as simple as where they choose to sit, can help to create a sense of comfort and familiarity. Knowing that they have a designated seat at a meal, even as simple as that may sound, is a part of the process of rebuilding that sense of trust.

In conversation with the Mamas, the maternal figure who lives in each family, I asked about how they created an environment that allows the students to trust them, and allowed them to trust the students. It all comes back to relationships: patience, time, expectations, and repeated and consistent behavior. All of these are behaviors that can directly apply to the way we build trust within our own communities.

 

Concept #2: RESILIENCE

It’s amazing to see the healing the country is experiencing a mere 30 years after The Genocide. Survivors and perpetrators walk, work, and live side by side. One of the interesting processes used to navigate this healing was through community based courts via restorative justice. The traditional court system would have taken years to try each perpetrator, and communities created their own systems to navigate this. Families were able to speak directly to the individual responsible for killing their relatives, and get answers and information that helped them to heal. Perpetrators were able to speak directly to survivors, and work to heal their own emotions about their actions.

The A for ASYV is Agahozo, which roughly translates to a place where tears have dried. At my last meal with my family, I spoke again with a student who happened to be the smiliest of all bunch. Interestingly enough, he was also one of the few who sat in a different seat at every meal. We spoke about his positivity, and I asked how he was able to consistently be so happy. He shared with me his family story: his family was persecuted and fled the country, living in a refugee camp in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As situations changed and the family was forced to leave that refugee camp, his family resettled in another refugee camp run by the UN in Rwanda, where his family still lives today. He shared that his parents were incredibly open about their experiences, and the student more or less implied that he had a choice to make between bitterness and anger or positivity. Resilience to him, he shared, meant that he needed to make a conscious choice to exist in the latter. The student went on to share that if he had a memoir written about him, it would be titled “Persecuted, but Hopeful”. Incredible maturity – did I mention this student was 14?

While I was in Rwanda to observe and research, I did have the opportunity to teach a handful of courses as well. One of the sessions I facilitated was for ASYV’s Student Government, where I introduced a concept about our levels of comfort called Know Your Zone. We spoke about what it means to be in our Comfort Zones, doing the things that feel right and comfortable to us. There is a step outside The Comfort Zone called The Stretch Zone – this is where we feel stretched to grow and try new things. It’s as uncomfortable as stretching your flexibility to touch your toes – perhaps beyond it’s beyond our comfort, though it’s in this zone where we can grow and learn the most. The more time we spend in the stretch zone, the more we can grow and expand our comfort zone. The third layer is called The Panic Zone, where we are totally pushed to the brink. It’s where we live in that panicked “fight or flight” mindset. While we often can’t control it, we never want to be in The Panic Zone – when we find ourselves there, we must figure out how to get back into the Comfort or Stretch Zones. I’d imagine that for some of these students, they’ve lived in the Panic Zone, which has totally recalibrated their ability to understand what it means to exist in the Comfort and Stretch Zones. Leveraging TBRI and a number of other resources, ASYV is actively working to support that recalibration, and it wasn’t surprising that of all the concepts we discussed in our session that this idea in particular stood out to the students the most. During “Family Time” (evening reflection, learning, and community building done with each family before closing out the day), I spoke about this concept with the family I was paired with, and specifically as it relates to the importance of trying new things. We spoke about reframing perceived failures when trying new things as true learning opportunities, and shared examples of things we are currently good at to remember how much time it took for that skill to be fully realized. I was impressed that in seeing students the next day, many asked immediately what new things I had tried since we last saw each other, and shared some of their own.

In addition to leadership development coursework, I also had the opportunity to work with ASYV’s Drama Department. Through acting exercises and group conversation, I introduced the concept of subtext. In acting, a character’s emotion is a generally multitude of feelings. For simplicity sake, a character may attempt to present happiness externally and yet feel deep sadness internally – think of your excitement that your best friend got a role in the play you weren’t cast in, or learning of a dear one’s engagement while going through a breakup. As my former theater educator Susan Gorman taught me, if the external emotion is the red, and the internal emotion is the yellow, what comes out on our faces and in our tone of voice is the orange. In exploring resilience, I think Rwandans have much of this orange in their daily interactions – they can live in their daily lives with hope for the future while simultaneously carrying the memories and deep traumas in the past. There’s a strong desire to present a more positive exterior, and I don’t think any one of us from outside the culture can fully judge or understand what the true emotions are on the inside.

TBRI plays a critical role in resilience as well. As the Country Director of ASYV mentioned, you cannot give what you do not have; if you have traumas, you need to heal from them in order to have trust. I reflect on this often with leaders through the lens of thinking about leadership as an oxygen mask – we need to ensure that we’ve put on our own in order to help and support those around us. Even with the rich culture and vibrance of today, Rwanda is still a country that carries a number of different traumas. The process of healing and building resilience for ourselves is critical in order to be able to support others later – we must first understand ourselves and what we must do to heal ourselves, and then can we figure out how to help someone else.

A prime example of this is The Mamas. Many of these individuals lost husbands or children, many have smaller families or no longer have anyone. Through their role at ASYV, the opportunity exists to have children again. As a result, it can bring some positive memories or repressed traumas. The Mamas are a group have received the most training, as ASYV understands the critical role the Mamas play in fostering their own resilience in order to do so for the students. Further, ASYV has noticed a significant difference between pre and post TBRI training for the Mamas.

 

Concept #3: COMMUNITY

Of all the areas I had the opportunity to observe during my time in Rwanda, I was most struck by the culture’s emphasis on Community. Rwandan culture is a stark contrast from American culture, prioritizing the larger community over the independent and individualist mindset. In Rwanda, if it is raining, it is customary to enter the nearest stranger’s house or store to wait until the rain has passed. One of the first things I felt when coming to Rwanda was this sense of feeling welcomed – I immediately felt comfortable here. While much of the logistics were arranged for me, which certainly helped create a sense of ease in a new culture, I wonder if the culture of community played a role in that as well.

When Anne Heymen z”l (the founder of ASYV) learned that the largest issue in Rwanda was the child orphan crisis, she was inspired to leverage a similar youth village structure to what Israel created for orphans from the Holocaust. For individuals who may no longer have the traditional family community structure, these youth villages stepped in to serve as that community connection.

The village’s structure highlights the value of community, and the concept of “it takes a village”. Even the words used, from family to mamas, to big siblings, to cousins, community structure was highly evident. One of my favorite aspects of this was the country wide concept adopted by the school called Muchaka, Muchaka, a morning ritual where students run as a group to start their days. In both ASYV and in the neighboring communities, it was common at 5 or 6AM to see large groups going on runs together. While chants are being performed, lead by one of the runners, it was also an opportunity for informal connection with those running next to us, and accomplishing that task as a community to start off the day.

When walking back to the communal area from the high school, I spent some time walking with the students I had met. On the other side of the fence, walking on the public road, was a boy around the same age who was not a part of the community, walking home from his school. ASYV interviews a number of students that they unfortunately have to turn away – they are strict in having only 125 students per grade. For the students they cannot accept, they offer other counseling resources for those they can support.

It’s a jarring juxtaposition of seeing those receiving the help and support from those who are not. The students are keenly aware of this, and work to pay it forward. Tikkun Olam, and that specific Hebrew phrase of working to repair the world, is used as a mantra throughout the village. Students have donated resources and even money to local students, and have worked to use their own resources to solve problems within their own village, like engineering an automated alarm bell for the school for passing periods.

This community accountability is seen in other areas as well. When touring with the Women’s Center of Kigali, we saw a water station where individuals can fill up bottles or wash vehicles at a low cost. This is a fixed cost by the government, painted on a nearby sign, with the phone number for the police department listed below should a business owner attempt to price gouge. As a tool for community building, Milk Bars (in lieu of coffee shops) are places for meeting friends new and old. Community building, and the consciousness of other, is woven deeply into Rwandan culture.

It was a noticeable transition back to the United States, where the community concept is exemplified primarily on much smaller scales. And yet, the concept of community is one that many are craving. To feel that we are a part of something bigger, to have a purpose, and to feel a sense of protection are human instincts. As I continue my work in the leadership development space, and in my own community, I plan to find opportunities to integrate these concepts even more into these spaces, and work to help others grow and expand that feeling of community in their own networks as well.

Concluding Thoughts:

My time in Rwanda, particularly at ASYV, was an experience that reshaped my understanding of resilience, trust, and community. Witnessing how a nation that endured such unimaginable tragedy has found ways to heal and rebuild was both humbling and inspiring. The lessons I learned—from the importance of trust-based relationships to the power of choosing resilience, and the deep value of communal support—are ones I hope to carry forward in my own life and leadership work. I am grateful to JDC and ASYV for the opportunity, and look forward to continuing to share more about the mission of both organizations. As I return home, I am challenged to not only reflect on these concepts but to actively incorporate them into my own communities, fostering spaces of connection, growth, and shared responsibility for a better world.