Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village
Through healing, education, and love, the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village empowers orphaned and vulnerable Rwandan youth to build lives of dignity and contribute to a better world.
Program Area: Youth Development / Youth Leadership
Location: East Africa
Grant Amounts: $700,000 (over 5 years)
$15,000
Grant Type(s): Capacity Building
Wellness & Professional Development
Grant Year Awarded: 2022
2023
Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village (ASYV) was created in the early 2000s to provide shelter, education, and tools for wellbeing to orphaned and vulnerable youth in Rwanda in response to the 1994 Genocide. Anne Heyman, the prolific founder of ASYV, was inspired by her Jewish tradition of Tikkun Olam (Hebrew for repair of the world ), and endeavored to create a space for youth refuge in the way that similar villages were constructed in Israel after the Holocaust left many children stranded and in need of physical, mental, educational, and moral support.
In 2008, the first class of 128 students entered ASYV. Over the years, ASYV has served close to 1,500 individuals, touching the lives of students and families with high-quality education; access to basic needs such as shelter, food, water, and healthcare; and enrichment programs. Each student is offered residency at a local Rwandan family home, a holistic education that involves computer literacy and English-language learning, full physical and physiological check-ups by on-site registered doctors and nurses, mentorship opportunities, and community building projects and experiences.
ASYV has expanded their mission to serve not just orphaned children, but also those touched by abuse and poverty in addition to refugee youth. In order to recruit students that would benefit from ASYV the most, the organization works with government entities such as refugee camps in order to identify at-risk youth. The model works, too. 97 percent of ASYV students pass their national exams at the conclusion of their courses. Students find their passion outside of the classroom as well, with extracurricular clubs like Model United Nations, scientific competitions, and entrepreneurial initiatives, winning awards and gaining exposure both locally and nationally.
ASYV helps the individuals they serve grow, learn, self-determine and succeed, and gain opportunities that would not have been possible otherwise in order to create a more equitable society in Rwandan communities and beyond. Five Together Foundation has been a supporter of the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village since its inception. The work has been supported with general operating dollars, as well as capacity grants for infrastructure improvements and strategic planning. In November 2020, in the face of the COVID-19 crisis, Five Together Foundation supported a renovation of ASYV’s student residences student residences, providing transformative rehabilitation for the community dining hall and kitchen, classrooms, and eight family homes, as well as Covid-19 testing costs. ASYV has recently secured over 1 million dollars in funding from the MasterCard Foundation to scale the model. The village will be training Rwandan educators on their pedagogy.
