Tomorrow afternoon, a group of my Liquidnet colleagues and I will be boarding a flight for Amsterdam to connect with another flight to Kigali, Rwanda. We’re going to the Agahozo Shalom Youth Village in Rwamagana, Rwanda to help upgrade and extend the village’s wireless networks and servers.
The Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village (ASYV) is a residential community in rural Rwanda. Its 144 acres are home to youth who were orphaned during and after the genocide in 1994. The Village is designed to care for, protect and nurture these young people. It is a place of hope, where “tears are dried” (signified by the Kinyarwanda word agahozo) and where the aim is to live in peace (from Hebrew, shalom). The marrying of these two languages and concepts in the name of the Village is intended as a reminder of the success of similar efforts in Israel, where genocide also changed the face of a nation. — ASYV web site
I’ll be posting pictures, and updates from the trip (which includes a trip to visit with Rwanda’s Mountain Gorillas) on a separate Tumblr blog – alinrwanda.tumblr.com. Please join me over there for a look at how technology is helping change kids’ lives in central Africa.