• Currently six young adults serve alongside companions in Rwanda through ELCA Young Adults in Global Mission.
• The Rwanda country program was funded by gifts to Always Being Made New: The Campaign for the ELCA.
• Learn more at
elca.org/globalchurch. Warner had wanted to use his Spanish-language skills to assist
immigrants from Latin America. After serving among refugees and former refugees in Rwanda, he is now looking for a job in the Twin Cities working with refugees and immigrants “coming from everywhere, but especially Somalia.” “In light of all the things being said against refugees, the
fearmongering, the politics, I want to make sure there are voices out there saying, ‘You are welcome,’ ” he added. “Across the board, YAGM participants go back to the U.S. immensely grateful and moved by the hospitality they have received. It’s something they want to live out [at home].”
Learning from reconciliation A national focus on justice and reconciliation has helped Rwandans recover from the genocide and equipped people from both sides of the conflict to live together once again. Through the process, the United Nations reported more than 120,000 people were able to confess their crimes, show remorse, ask for forgiveness from their community and reintegrate into daily life. What can be learned from Rwanda’s experience? At the Protestant Institute of Arts and Social Science,
Hermanns took classes in nonviolence and participated in the peace club while teaching English to students who were studying development, education or theology. Once she heard visiting Minnesotans give a presentation about
the U.S. Civil War and segregation in the South. “Afterward, a student raised his hand to compliment the presenters,” she said. “Then he asked, ‘What kind of reconciliation is going on between North and South or black people and white?’ ” The room went quiet. Rwandans are “obviously not proud of their history, but they
are taking a hard look at it, accepting reality and building on it,” she said. “We in the U.S. have a tendency to sweep our history under the rug.” Hermanns believes that racial tensions in the U.S., including police brutality and segregated cities, stem from not acknowledging the past and building on it. She knows now that peace isn’t just lack of conflict, she said,
but a complex puzzle whose pieces include governance, policy, health and education. Next fall Hermanns will start a graduate program in
sustainable peace-building at the University of Wisconsin– Milwaukee. Her Rwandan experience, she said, “will give me a rich experience to draw from as I study some of that complexity, how those pieces can connect to build a more peaceful society.”
Anne Basye is a freelance writer living in the Pacific Northwest.
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