Results tagged “news”

Yesterday morning I walked into the Prison Fellowship Rwanda office where I work part-time and saw a familiar face sitting at my colleagues desk. It was Mattias, a repentent genocide perpetrator who killed countless people in the 1994 genocide. His story of transformation is told in Catherine Larson's book As We Forgive. Mattias was also counseled and led to repentence by Pastor Gahigi,  featured in the AWF film.

Muraho from Rwanda! My name is Rachel Weber, a recent addition to the Living Bricks team. I will be working as the Communications Coordinator from Rwanda through June 2010. I have the unique opportunity to track stories of radical reconciliation, repentance, and forgiveness throughout Rwanda and share them with our faithful supporters in the U.S. I will also be offering organizational support and communications assistance to the As We Forgive: Rwanda Initiative, which uses the film As We Forgive as an educational tool to create public dialogue about the process of reconciliation, repentance, and forgiveness throughout Rwanda.

Groundbreaking News...

We are absolutely thrilled to announce that AS WE FORGIVE has been awarded a $262,000 grant from the John Templeton Foundation for a one-year international outreach campaign.

The grant will provide for a US outreach and screening campaign, which will include a PBS premiere of AWF during the 15th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. It also provides funding for a full-time Screening Tour Director position, which will be held by my esteemed colleague Genevieve Ebel. We will be developing educational resources to accompany the DVD and will continue to screen the film across the country in universities, churches, and schools.

The other exciting news is that the grant will allow us to plan a national premiere of AWF in Rwanda's capitol in late spring. We'll be working with the Rwanda Unity and Reconciliation Commission as well as the Ministry of Culture to plan a premiere in the national basketball stadium, which can hold up to 3,000 people. Our job will be to put together a Rwandan team to plan the logistics and fill all the seats!

After the premiere, a newly appointed Rwandan Screening Tour Director will set off on a cross-country tour, showing the film in villages, schools, churches and government programs that are engaging people in the work of reconciliation. Our hope is that the film will inspire further dialogue and hope among Rwandans walking the difficult road towards reconciliation.

More about Templeton:

The mission of the John Templeton Foundation is to serve as a philanthropic catalyst for discovery in areas engaging life's biggest questions. These questions range from explorations into the laws of nature and the universe to questions on the nature of love, gratitude, forgiveness, and creativity. To learn more, visit www.templeton.org.