Hope for the Future

Phyllis Lerner,  affiliated with the John Hopkins University School of Education, will talk about her experiences (educational, humanitarian, as well as personal) with the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village in Rwanda.  

Planting seeds of hope in a soil of human suffering, the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village opened in 2008.  More than 500 orphaned and vulnerable teenagers live there in homes with "Mamas," Rwandan women who lost family members, sometimes entire families in the Genocide against the Tutsi tribe in 1994. Though South African founder Anne Heyman died in 2015, the school continues to transform and thrive.  

The name of the Youth Village is derived from the concept of a place where "tears are dried" (Kinyarwanda word "agahozo") and the vulnerable youth can "live in peace" (Jewish word "shalom").  The goal of the Village is to enable socially vulnerable young people to thrive, develop a new "family," and then become contributors to their own adult communities/country.

Phyllis Lerner has been a faculty associate with the Johns Hopkins University School of Education – Teach for America program since 2005.  In her early years of teaching, she was the USA delegate leader to the Children’s International Summer Village (CISV) in Sweden. Since then, Phyllis has continued to spiral back to global education efforts, including six more years with CISV in Mumbai, India, the area made famous in the film "Slumdog Millionaire," and in western Thailand’s Burmese refugee camps with the American Jewish World Service. Phyllis is best described by the titles she cherishes from nine semesters with ASYV-Rwanda: “Auntie and Teacher.” 

This presentation will bring the Agohozo-Shalom Village to us through photos, stories, music, and heartfelt humor of Phyllis' experiences in the "Land of 1000 Hills."

Register at: https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/presentation-about-agahozo-sharlom-youth-village