Rwandan Testimonies Added to IWitness

Ten Rwandan testimonies from USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive are the latest additions to IWitness, USC Shoah Foundation’s interactive educational website that allows students to complete activities and create multimedia projects using testimony from the Visual History Archive.

The inclusion of Rwandan testimonies marks the first time IWitness has offered fully searchable Rwandan testimonies for use by middle- and high school teachers and their students, and the first time students can build video projects with both Holocaust and Rwanda Tutsi Genocide testimonies.

This fall, two new Information Quest activities highlighting Rwandan testimonies will go live. IWitness’s Information Quest activity allows students to watch a testimony clip and then create a word cloud, a fitting title, a meaningful quotation, and a personal response to reflect their individual feelings and perceptions about the story. Teachers may also build their own activities using the Rwandan testimonies.

Some of the testimonies are in the Kinyarwanda language with subtitles, so they could also be viewed by students and teachers currently participating in USC Shoah Foundation’s pilot of IWitness in Rwanda.

USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive contains 52,000 audiovisual testimonies from survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides conducted in 57 countries and in 33 languages.