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Visiting Rwanda. Football for Peace: Ishami Foundation in action. 

Written by Anna Birakos, (Ishami Foundation Project Outreach Volunteer Officer).

I’ve been volunteering for Ishami Foundation for over a year, whilst completing an MA in History, specialising in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi. In June 2022, I visited Kigali to learn more about the work Ishami Foundation do on the ground in Rwanda. Ishami Foundation uses sport and storytelling to educate communities and individuals about the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in the UK. We also have several community impact coaches based in Rwanda who work with children and community members to facilitate football sessions based on our core values which accentuate the importance of collaboration, respect, communication, and unity.

During my trip, I met with the CEO and founder of Ishami Foundation, Eric Murangwa Eugene. Although Eric lives in London, we coincided our visits to Rwanda to ensure I was able to help with a pre-planned sporting programme initiative for volunteers of KidsPlay at Good Heritage Academy. The event was led by our coaches, Evariste Habimana and Oscarie Iragena and involved thirty international volunteers, as part of our sport for social development initiative. Our coaches led team building exercises, football drills and games which focused on building communication, teamwork, peace and connectivity through sport. Although the session was organised for international volunteers of a different NGO (KidsPlay), it followed the typical structure of the weekly football sessions which are arranged for our Rwandan Ishami team players. It was a fantastic opportunity to learn more about our projects and was incredibly well received by our participants! 

Whilst in Kigali, I also met with Olivier Brave Ngabo, the Programs Director of Ibuka Rwanda. Ibuka is the largest Rwandan memory and survivor organisation, it maintains strong links with Ishami Foundation, along with the wider diasporic survivor communities around the world. Ibuka means ‘remember’ in Kinyarwanda. Olivier kindly explained how the organisation works in Rwanda and internationally. Its outreach and success since 1994 are incredibly impressive; he also detailed the barriers facing the future progression of its work and its connection to Ishami. Olivier later showed me around Nyanza genocide memorial where over 105,000 victims are buried. The newly established memorial garden, created by the First lady of Rwanda, uses nature to symbolically memorialise and explain the facts of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. For example, in the dry garden, one million stones symbolise the over one million victims of the genocide. There are caves, a small stream (symbolic of a river), and long grasses which emulate the conditions where people were murdered or where survivors hid during the 100 days. Seeing the memorial was an incredibly moving experience which had a profound effect on me. It was a privilege to meet Olivier and a powerful reminder of the importance of supporting diasporic Rwandan survivor organisations around the world. 

During my trip, I was also incredibly privileged (and lucky enough!) to visit the Angolan Black and White Colobus Monkeys of the Nyungwe Forest, join the traditional Rwandan fishermen on a night fishing exhibition for Sambaza on Lake Kivu and experience the wealth of arts and culture that Kigali has to offer at Inema Art Centre. In my weeks there, I fell in love with Rwanda; the welcoming and kind people that I met, and the beauty of the country is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.

Working with the Foundation in Rwanda not only gave me the opportunity to learn, first-hand, about the impact that Ishami Foundation has in Rwanda and the significance of using football as a tool to promote social cohesion and unity, but it also solidified the fundamental importance of remembering, uniting and working together, across continents, to ensure ‘Never Again’ becomes a reality, rather than a slogan. I am incredibly grateful to have met and worked with our remarkable coaches and partners, and I feel extremely lucky to have had the privilege of visiting the beautiful land of a thousand hills.

If you are interested in learning more about the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi and supporting our reconciliation and awareness projects, both in Rwanda and in the UK, please get in touch.

GloKnoCo Trip to Berlin

Written by Anna Birakos (MA History, Durham University, Ishami Foundation Project Outreach Volunteer), and Erin Brady (MA Islamic Studies, SOAS University, Ishami Foundation Volunteer).

Alongside Eric Murangwa Eugene (CEO and Founder of Ishami Foundation), we attended the Global Sport for Development and Peace Knowledge Collaborative (GloKnoCo) conference in Berlin in early November. GloKnoCo was established three years ago under the Erasmus and EU programme. The trip consisted of a 5-day field trip which sought to explore the way in which sport can be used for social development and peace. It involved three universities: the University of Brighton (UK), the University of Paderborn (Germany) and the University of Olomouc (Czech Republic), along with three NGO representatives. The duration of the trip was spent visiting different organisations around Berlin, with the aim of understanding how these groups used football as a tool to empower communities.

The GloKnoCo trip was an exciting, eye-opening, and educational experience, which gave both of us the opportunity to learn, reflect and comprehend how sport can be used as an essential tool to create strong relationships, develop communities and create peace and unity. On our first day in Berlin, we visited Anna Worrmann (Engagement Global), and Moritz Voges (Lernort Stadion), at Hertha BSC sports complex and learned about the practical activities and methodologies for children. The trip was a fun, educational experience where we learnt how problem-solving activities with children can teach them innate values and morals.

Our highlights also involved visiting KickFair, a Street Football Youth NGO based in Berlin. This organisation visits schools around the city to help underprivileged children learn about the importance of developing confidence and skills through football, by teaching them the values of respect, communication, and teamwork. This aligns closely with Ishami Foundation’s objectives, which seek to merge testimonies of survivors of the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi with the active side of football. The session allowed us to reflect on how we can interact with young people in an engaging manner whilst simultaneously encouraging thoughtfulness and thinking skills. We hope to use these considerations to better combine football and storytelling in our Lessons From Rwanda programme, by working with underprivileged children in schools around the UK in the future.

Equally, visiting Hangar 1 was an enriching experience. Temelhof airport ground has been converted into a space were refugees and the people of Berlin can come together to participate in sport, culture, education and counselling – for free. Hangar 1’s vision is to provide a space where everyone feels included, an idea carefully curated right down to the activities they offer to the drinks they provide in the café. By founding the space on the principles of inclusion, cohesion and wellbeing, the importance of cooperation and integration through sport resonate with our mutual ethos at Ishami. During our visit, we were included in the Hangar 1’s community by participating in various sporting activities; volleyball, roller-skating and, of course, football! After our session, we sat down with Ian, a representative from PLAY!YA (an NGO concerned with sports as a social phenomenon), and discussed what we’d learnt about the way sport impacts communities. This extended to a conversation on how other methods, such as art and theatre, can be used to help and reconciliate both international and local communities.

Similarly, visiting Street Football World was an incredible opportunity to learn about the roles of professional footballers and their working relationships with different stakeholders. We met Thomas and Attah Jeph Okekwu and learned about their new, ground-breaking initiative ‘Common Goal.’ ‘Common Goal’ is designed to connect grassroots sports programmes around the world with international professional footballers. Key players donate 1% of their wages to the project, which enables more NGOs and sports organisations to bring the power of sport to underprivileged communities. Learning about the programme taught us about the influence of football, hope and collaboration.

Eric Murangwa Eugene, our CEO and Founder, also sat down with the students to give a powerful presentation about his life and the story of Rwanda. It was an incredible privilege to listen to Eric’s testimony, and it gave GloKnoCo participants the unique opportunity to reflect on some of the central issues that we face in the world today, in terms of division, polarisation and perpetual ‘othering’ in society. It also pushed us to consider the humanity and power of football and its effect on people’s lives.

Although the trip aimed to enlighten us about the different ways sport can be used as a tool for social change, we also enjoyed meeting other like-minded students, academics, and NGO representatives from around the world. After 18 months of covid-induced isolation, the opportunity to meet new people with a common interest was particularly wonderful! We enjoyed talking to different students, whose backgrounds ranged from Russian to Saudi Arabian to Indian, about their own areas of study and their cultural heritage; we were exceptionally lucky that the trip fell over Diwali so two students who celebrate the festival shared their traditions and practices with us. The group united through a common interest in sport, (in particular football), and we built friendships, discussed our ideas, and actively engaged with each other and the local community through our mutual desire to make a difference. This mirrors the values of Ishami Foundation, and we look forward to using the skills that we gained from the trip on the ground.

The trip took place between the 1st-5th of November 2021. There are plans for future trips to both Brussels and Paderborn in 2022.

By Joel Freedman

March-June 2020 will be remembered by those of us in the UK as when our lives completely changed. During lockdown, I, along with all my fellow students were sent home suddenly in the middle of term. Along with the rest of society we spent upwards of 8 weeks almost entirely inside our own houses, leaving only for brief periods of exercise. Relationships, work, travel and much more were put on hold as we came together to fight the coronavirus pandemic. Whilst we were facing an unprecedented threat that had the potential to impact any one of us at any time, millions of people across Myanmar, China, Sudan and several other countries faced an all too familiar threat. Genocide has been taking place in Myanmar against Rohingya’s at least since 2016; in China against the Uyghur’s at least since 2014 and in Sudan against Darfuri’s since 2003. Unfortunately, for these groups of people and many others, coronavirus has not alleviated their suffering.

Since the start of lockdown, there have been a number of causes that have caught public attention. Two of these cases are, the Black Lives Matter movement and the suffering that the people of Yemen continue to experience. Students have been at the forefront of campaigning. My social media feed was flooded with calls to sign a petition, make a small donation, or even a plea to just engage in general education. From a personal perspective I highly commend any campaign that intends to increase awareness, education or help a discriminated against group in any positive way. However, whilst I wholeheartedly support these campaigns, they alone are not enough.

The only way in which we, as a human race, will prevent future hate, discrimination and persecution based on identity is through a change of collective and individual attitudes. Until we, as individuals, truly embody the attitude of caring about hate directed at another group of people as much as we care about hate directed at our own group, genocide and general baseless hatred will continue. As more and more individuals commit to actively trying to live by this attitude, slowly the institutions that make up our society will be filled with people who are determined to fight all baseless hatred, not just hate directed at certain groups. The campaigns and conversations that took place during lockdown show that as long as we do not slip into old attitudes as the world goes back to normal this idyllic society can be a reality.

Living by this attitude is not easy. It is not something that any of us have accomplished and therefore no longer need to think about. It is an ongoing battle to fight our own prejudices. Whether it is educating ourselves in order to dispel misinformation and stereotypes. Ensuring that we get our news and ‘information’ from as diverse an array of sources as possible or learning about and commemorating other group’s tragedies in the same way we do our own. We must all make a conscious effort to constantly check our preconceived attitudes.

This is especially important in the face of growing genocide denial. Holocaust denial is rampant across Europe and with the last of the survivors passing away this is becoming an even more acute problem. Denial of other genocides such as the genocide against the Tutsi and the Bosnian genocide show that this form of revisionist history is something we need to tackle head on through education. Whilst most people (if not everyone) reading this article do not hold these views it is crucial to understand their prevalence so that we can be united as a society in combating them when we encounter denial of any groups suffering.

Myself and others are using digital mediums to educate about genocide. I have started a podcast with my friend Adam Grossman called ‘The Good Neighbour’ which will be released on December 9th. As part of this podcast we will be having conversations with diverse guests about issues related to baseless hatred. We do not approach these conversations as so-called ‘experts’ but as people who believe that having the discussion is valuable and therefore our hope is to provoke thoughts and conversations on these topics.

How can any group of people expect to lessen and prevent baseless hatred against their own group without significantly focusing on baseless hatred generally, against all groups? 

By Katie Garner

Togetherness Youth Cooperative is perched on a hillside in Munini, on the skirts of Kigali, Rwanda. The rich afternoon sun casts its glow across the valley, off the red dirt and onto the hard working, fast moving limbs of young footballers, boys and girls, who will not waste a single moment of the daylight hours between the end of school and the ever prompt arrival of the sunset.
Football is the life blood of this community, and has been since its formation. A group of orphaned kids gathered together onborrowed,unused land to spend their hours and days and weeks in the aftermath of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.
This is Togetherness, a cooperative that was formed from the ashes of the atrocity that happened on this soil, in this place. The founder of the cooperative is Pastor Steven Turikunkiko, a man who due to his own harrowing biography was unable and unwilling to turn away children. When he could no longer fit any more orphans in his house, he helped groups to form child-headed households, the only way to ensure that someone, somewhere was looking out for every child.
Togetherness is an epigraph as much as a name, and football is the art of Togetherness, the beautiful collision of people for the beautiful game and a common purpose beyond themselves.
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Over the last 20 years the community formed. Ten years ago, a large piece of land was bought, tilled, and transformed with enterprising businesses: farming, a bakery, a pre-school, and buildings. Community gather here each day and at the core is a football pitch, dug by the youth themselves.
Years of rainfall, cascading from the top of the mountain, impeded only by a few buildings, banana trees and some vegetation, has tugged at the edge of this hand-dug pitch. Now, for the first time, proper water drainage is being introduced, the land is being prepared. Due to construction, no football has been played here for a few weeks, and the plants are seizing their brief, untrodden moment in the sun. Not for long. A large digger and a multitude of hands are clearing the space, cutting stone, flattening the earth, making it level, creating infrastructure ready for the future. It will eventually become a Junior FIFA pitch, a resource for this community, and a business proposition that will stabilise and sustain this community for another twenty, forty, sixty years.
Football, and the progress on this pitch has been made possible by the joint efforts of the Togetherness Youth Cooperative leadership, in conjunction with US non-profit, African Road. African Road purchased this piece of land and has partnered with this community for almost a decade, investing infriendship and relationship, encouraging, supporting and connecting these young people into a more expansive and sustainable future.
It was one of these strategic connections that found former Rwandan footballer, Eric Murangwa Eugene and the Ishami Foundation, a principle driver of the innovative Football for Hope, Peace and Unity training that has and continues to empower. Women and girls who are invited to the pitch, so often the protected domain of boys the world over, are now encouraged through sport to consider their value, their worth, the rightful space that they take up in the world. Young men are also involved, practicing connection and peacebuilding in formerly fractured circumstances, something that is echoed by Murangwa on pitches in the UK, his place of refuge from the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. Sport, football in particular is both the driver of transformation and the mechanics of it, accessing the deep cultural roots of community football to facilitate positive change.
Members of this cooperative and the wider community are already making their mark, with early cooperative members playing for the second division and junior national teams. For others it is the activity that gets them through the day, it is family, therapy, community, and focus.
By May it will be a stable pitch with tiered seating, drainage and toilets. This will secure the hillside and take the pitch half way through the evolution from a hand-dug dirt clearing, to a regulation FIFA Junior pitch.
There is still more to do. At Togetherness the story continues, with funding still required to complete the second stage of the work: lights for longevity of play, football turf, posts and nets to meet the necessary FIFA standard, and vital access to the site, with roads and parking to make this business more profitable.
You are invited to join Togetherness in building something that will sustain them mentally, emotionally, physically and financially, to be part of the ongoing story of reconciliation and hope in impossible circumstances.
Togetherness is also just the beginning, Eric Murangwa Eugene and the Ishami Foundation work with communities and cooperatives across Rwanda, where football has proved to be the vital sustaining force. In partnership with these young people, they seek funding for better pitches, for gender equality, a strengthening of individual identity, and business opportunity. These football pitches are monuments to overcoming and a necessary investment in a peaceful future.

December 9 2018

By Joel Freedman

As an 18 year old, the study and prevention of genocide is quite the unique passion.

Brought up, as a member of the Jewish community, I was educated on the horrors of the Holocaust from a young age. This only increased in secondary school with countless talks, assemblies, history classes being dedicated to the subject. As a budding historian, I was always fascinated by the causation of the holocaust and thus, like many other people, questioned how a select group of people can be this evil? Also, how could the world let this happen?

Eventually at the age of 16, I started to become aware that this kind of evil was not a lone event. Through the research that I undertook in my Extended Project Qualification (EPQ), I began to explore the atrocities of other genocides and in doing so decided to focus my research on the Genocide against the Tutsi, which took place in Rwanda. As the project progressed, my frustrations grew regarding my previous lack of awareness of the genocide as well as becoming overwhelmed by the lack of any form of education I had on all the other genocides that had taken place (excluding the Holocaust). The moment that I truly knew I had to take action was when I found out that genocides are still taking place, in mass, around the world. To some readers it might sound absurd that an educated, fairly academic, 16 year old did not have any real knowledge on genocides that are happening today and yet that is the truth.

This new comprehension led me to quickly realise that rather than being in the minority for my previous lack of knowledge I was actually in the vast majority. Other than regarding a personal connection to a specific genocide, I would strongly argue that very limited numbers of teenagers have any real understanding of the crime of genocide as a whole as well as having little to no knowledge of genocides taking place today.

This realisation led me to search social media for a survivor of the genocide against the Tutsi to come into my school in order to raise awareness of the genocide in my year. After a couple of failed attempts I discovered Eric Murangwa Eugene MBE. Not too long after meeting Eric, having had, a fair to say, almost instant rapport, he was in my school talking about his experiences. The outcome of this talk was greater than could have been imagined. Along with people crying, the line of students and teachers alike waiting to say thank you to Eric for enlightening them on both the genocide in Rwanda and the crime as a whole was from a personal perspective both moving and rewarding at the same time.

Fast-forwarding almost a year, I am now the Youth Trustee of Eric’s charity the Ishami Foundation. The foundation aims to utilise genocide survivor experience to connect us all to our common humanity. Working with Eric as well as Dr Zoe Norridge, the Chair of the Board of Trustees and a Senior Lecturer at Kings College London, I came up with the initiative to mark International Genocide commemoration and prevention day (December 9^th), which was created to remember the passing of the Genocide Convention in 1948. We decided to create a social media campaign with the aim of enlisting 70 individuals/organisations (for 70 years since the passing of the convention) to post on Twitter on December 9^th describing what the convention and/or the crime of genocide means to them.

The aim of raising awareness for both the day and the crime of genocide is simple and yet of huge significance. Awareness, followed by education are the steps that must be taken before genocide can be prevented.

The quote from a 2014 Save the Children advert “Just because it isn’t happening here, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening,” seems very much so appropriate. With racial polarisation becoming ever more present in our society, it is of increasing importance to remember and respect our common humanity.

As such, whether it is through our social media campaign #Genocide70 or through any other means; I hope December 9^th 2018 can forge the way for newfound genocide awareness and education for as many people as possible.