Why is Tufts Hillel involved?
The idea for the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village was hatched in the basement of Tufts Hillel in November 2005. Through Hillel’s Moral Voices lecture series, Hillel board members Anne Heyman and her husband Seth Merrin heard a talk about the Rwanda genocide by Paul Rusesabagina, the subject of the movie Hotel Rwanda. At a dinner after the talk, Seth asked Paul to identify the biggest problem facing Rwanda today. Paul replied that in a country with 1.2 million orphans – 15% of the population – there is no future for that country unless you can figure out how to help those children. Immediately, Anne, a South African-born lawyer and mother of three living in New York City, connected the challenge of the Rwandan orphan population to the similar challenge that Israel faced after the Second World War, when there had been a large influx of orphans from the Holocaust. To care for these traumatized youth, Israel built residential living communities called youth villages. Anne was inspired to bring
