Today was our conference day. We hear presentation from our partner organizations: the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission, the National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide, IBUKA (the umbrella organization for genocide survivor organizations in Rwanda), Memos, Learning From History (our keystone partner in the development of the Rwanda Bearing Witness Retreat), Kisinigara Youth Center (Maison des Jeunes) serving over 4000 youth and young survivors, Evangelical Prison Fellowship (doing victim-offender reconciliation work with genocide perpetrators and survivors). These are the key organizations and government agencies doing genocide prevention and healing and reconciliation work in Rwanda. We plan on adding more partner organizations next year.
In the afternoon we did and Open Space Technology process addressing four themes: 1) how to adapt the Bearing Witness Retreat model for Rwanda, 2) How to engage and empower youth in the use of the model, 3) how to best further the trauma healing work in Rwanda, 4) and how to support the development of Bearing Witness programs at the grassroots level in Rwanda. We will be publishing the results of this work on this site soon.
We concluded the historic first Rwanda Bearing Witness Retreat with a joyous, celebratory dinner with our nine international and nine Rwandan participants along with some special guests from Rwanda and Uganda.
Stay tuned to this site, to see the incredible photographs taken by our documentarian, the renowned New York photographer, Peter Cunningham.