Aegis Trust Youth Champions Use IWitness in Peace-Building Projects

(Aegis Trust Youth Champions at IWitness training with Rose Twagiramariya, second from left, and Appolon Gahongayire, far right)

Young people working to promote peace in Rwanda as part of the Aegis Trust Youth Champion program are turning to IWitness to aid in their projects.

Youth Champions come from all walks of life, from high school to college students, members of Rwandan youth groups and even those who are not in school. Over the course of the year-long program, they are tasked with creating projects that promote peace in their schools and communities, through radio programs, music, drama, film, community dialogues and more. This year, there are 200 Youth Champions – double the number from last year.

Six Youth Champions attended an IWitness training session at Kigali Genocide memorial earlier this month, led by Rose Twagiramariya, IWitness in Rwanda project manager, and Appolon Gahongayire Aegis Trust education officer. These Youth Champions’ projects are video-based and they want to collect messages from genocide survivors. IWitness allows students to watch testimonies of survivors of the Holocaust and Rwandan Tutsi Genocide and complete activities using a built-in video editor.

Now that they have learned how to use the video editor in IWitness, it will provide an ideal platform for them to create their videos, said Aegis Trust Rwanda’s national youth coordinator Marc Gwamaka.

They will also become “IWitness ambassadors” and introduce IWitness to schools to further promote their mission of building peace throughout Rwanda.

Since IWitness launched in Rwanda two years ago, 260 students at 22 schools have participated in classroom pilots. Over 300 teachers have attended IWitness professional development programs and presentations.