KUKI NDIHO FOUNDATION WHY DO I EXIST? Morris Catholic High School: Never Again, A Lesson in Forgiveness.

Bullying has become an epidemic in Americas schools today. It is a growing issue that is well documented in our daily news. Although its consequences are constantly talked about what causes a child to become a bully is still debated upon. Most children bully because they have been through a trauma themselves and see bullying as the only way to cope. It is a vicious cycle because children that are bullied either become bullies themselves or are forever emotionally damaged by their negative experiences. One way to break this vicious cycle is to teach our children forgiveness, make them understand how important it is to forgive another person that has hurt them. Bullies can forgive those that have hurt them and stop their damaging actions. Victims of bullies can learn to forgive and in doing so stop the cycle from spreading. A perfect way of achieving this vital goal is to show them forgiveness and its impact in other peoples lives. Watching and listening to Marie Claudine Mukamabano give her Never Again, the need for Forgiveness speech will help children learn why they need to forgive and that it is the only way chance they have of achieving a sustainable life. Marie Claudine Mukamabano is a Rwandan Activist, Model and Artist that is a survivor of the tragic 1994 Rwandan Genocide. Ms. Mukamabano is a motivational speaker. I was privileged to attend one of her presentations at Morris Catholic High School in Morris County, New Jersey. She was part of a Global Initiative event that was geared towards helping students become more aware of the world around them. Her speech was titled Dr. Gradone introduced Ms. Mukamabano in front of the entire student body. Ms. Mukamabano, who was introduced by the principal Dr. Gradone, started her presentation with acknowledgments and went on to speak about her life in Rwanda. Ms. Mukamabano first tried to make her audience aware of how ordinary and peaceful her life before the Genocide was. Illustrated by pictures, you could hear the joy in her voice when she spoke about her family life and childhood. She wanted to be an artist and spoke of how even though
By ######

they did not have a lot her mother scraped everything she had so Claudine could take dance classes. Ms. Mukamabanos voice completely changed when she started sharing her heartbreaking experience during the Genocide and how much she was directly impacted by the tragedy. There was an obvious catch and tears at times in her voice when she talked about how she hid with her family until they were gradually killed. You could hear the gasps of horror and compassion from the audience when she said she saw her mother being murdered. There was such sadness on the students faces around me in the audience when they heard that she only had a brother and a sister left today. Ms. Mukamabano then went on to explain that without forgiveness it is impossible to move on in ones life after a tragedy has occurred to us. Bullying is a personal tragedy that children go through everyday. The only way that Claudine is today able to live her life, to honor her family, especially her mothers memory, she said, is that she had to forgive those that caused her so much pain. She elaborated on how when you dont forgive you keep resentment in your heart, which turns to anger, which makes you obsessed with revenge and destroys your life. You become so focused on getting back at the person who hurt you that you waste your life. You lose your dreams, and in doing so you will never be happy. You could see the kids nodding in agreement with her words as she went along. It broke down the concept of forgiveness in a way that allowed them to understand that to forgive a person is for your own good. In Ms. Mukamabanos own words It is to help you move on, to help you find the joy in your heart, live a peaceful life. Ms. Mukamabano did a great job of keeping the audience enthralled by incorporating them into her presentation. She asked several questions that the students were more than willing to answer. While she was discussing the importance of keeping your dream, of making your dream come true she asked some of the students what their dreams were. Most of them yelled out their diverse answers ranging from I want to be a rock start! to I would like to be a doctor! She told her audience how important it was to focus on their dream and not let themselves be led astray. Ms. Mukamabano made all the students get up and sing about peace and how without peace

there is no life for anyone. It was quite inspiring to see how much the students got involved in the singing. Some even started giving the song a beat with their hands, some with chairs. Ms. Mukamabano also spoke of her non-profit organization, the Kuki Ndiho Foundation that strives to help the one million Rwandan orphans of the Rwandan Genocide. Her foundation also provides help towards the fight against HIV/AIDS in Rwanda. She showed several pictures of the orphans in their daily lives. She enumerated the many ways to help the orphans in Rwanda with a monetary contribution, no matter how small it is, it adds up, she said. She encouraged the audience to log on to the foundations website or Facebook page to get more information. At the end of her presentation, Ms. Mukamabano answered several questions from the students. A few are listed below. Q: How did you survive the Genocide? A: I think that it was a miracle that I am alive today. I was almost killed at a road stop by the Interahamwe but was saved by a group of Hutu friends that believed that me and my mother were also Hutu because we had fake Hutu ID cards. Q: How did your mother die? A: With tears and emotion evident in her face, Ms. Mukamabano answered: I am sorry but some of the trauma that I went through are still too hard for me to talk about. This is one of them Q: When was the last time you went to Rwanda? A: 2005 Q: Are you afraid they will kill you when you go back to Rwanda? A: NO, the Genocide ended over 15 years ago Q: why did genocide happen in Rwanda? A: because the Hutu, the majority of the population acted on hatred for the Tutsi. They had many ignoble names for us, such as cockroaches and wanted to kill us all Q: How can we help the orphans today? A: there are many ways to help. If you can spare $5, $10, $20 that

can send a child to school. You can also volunteer your time like an intern from City College just did last summer. She went to help teach English to the kids in Rwanda. You can also participate in a pen pal program so you can write to the kids to let them know they are not alone The presentation ended with a standing ovation from all the students and one of the teachers came onto the stage to put the Rwandan flag on their Global Initiatives tableau project. As Dr. Gradone told us after the presentation, the last time my students were that happy and gave a standing ovation was when they were told they would have two days of vacation so you need to know that they liked you very, very much. You made a big impact on them! Students surrounded Ms. Mukamabano immediately after the event. Some just wanted to say how much they appreciated her speech and how they always though of forgiveness as an abstract notion. One of the students said the way you broke it down really made it easy for us to understand. Others wanted to know how to contact her because they wanted to help the Orphans of Rwanda. It was easy to see how impressed students were by the presentation. There were four students that were traditionally dressed and briefly participated in the speech. At the end they were actually reluctant to give the attires back because they liked them very much. Ms. Mukamabano was also quite impressed and happy by the attention she was getting towards her Foundation but for her, it came down to knowing she personally impacted her audience. She asked everyone that came up to her one question Which part of my presentation did you like the most? overwhelmingly, the answer was the personal emotional parts of her own life that she shared. It helped students realize how much they had in common with people that were from other countries. As an observer and member of her audience, it was obvious to see the impact Ms. Mukamabano has when she speaks. Through her speech, she makes you realize that peace is primordial in our everyday lives. Forgiveness is key to leading our lives and it is so important to forgive those that have done you wrong. For students that go through petty fights in school, and let themselves get resentful and angry with their aggressor and become aggressors themselves, there is a need for them to understand that forgiveness is the key to breaking this cycle. Of course, it is one thing to

hear about forgiveness and it is another to actually practice it. I believe that students that understand it better and know that it will ameliorate their lives, will be much more encouraged to practice it daily. They can take the example of Ms. Mukamabano. After all, as one of the students said, wow, if you can forgive the people that hurt your family so much, it makes us think about how angry we get at the small stuff everyday! Our schools in America are greatly affected by bullies and the violence they bring into schools. There is a lot of talk of how to stop this violence. After watching the positive impact of Marie Claudine Mukamabanos, I have to say that one of the best decisions a principal could make for their school is to have such an inspirational speaker that is willing to use her personal experience to inspire forgiveness and peace in others. As for us, we can certainly incorporate her lesson in our daily lives by being aware of our world. We can certainly try to do something about other violent situations in the worlds such as the Genocide in Darfur, Sudan happening today.