BY HANNAH PURKEY

In print | Published January 31, 2008

Stephanie Nyombayire ’08 recently was recognized by the first lady of Rwanda, Jeannette Kagame, as a Young Rwandan Woman Achiever for her efforts with the Genocide Intervention Network.

“I am honored because [the award] is from someone I admire so much and for a cause that matters,” Nyombayire said. Kagame presented Nyombayire and six others with the award at the launch of Kagame’s Imbuto Foundation, an expansion of a previous organization, Protection and Care for Families against HIV/AIDS. “Now it is also focused on women and helping them to achieve more and to empower women,” Nyombayire said. The day was dedicated to Rwandan women, who were invited to come and participate in discussions and listen to speakers. Some of the speakers included female diplomats, female entrepreneurs and women who have achieved high levels of education. “The first lady’s goal was to show young women how far you could go,” Nyombayire said. “To give young girls examples and models that they can follow.”

Nyombayire was recognized at the forum for her work with the Genocide Intervention Network, an organization founded in 2004 by Swarthmore students to help Americans take a stand against genocide, especially the current situation in Darfur, according to the organization’s Web site.

Nyombayire became involved with the GI-Net when approached by Mark Hanis ‘05 and Andrew Sniderman ’07, and was immediately interested in the organization. "I was interested because of the angle of the organization’s mission, of direct action," Nyombayire said. “A lot of the response to the conflict seem superficial, and we wanted to get to the roots of the issue and provide what is most needed, which was and is security.”

The money raised by GI-Net goes to education, advocacy and divestment, but money also goes to security, according to Nyombayire. This requires coordination between refuges in Northern Darfur and the African Union so that escorts can be available to accompany women collecting firewood, which is when they are most susceptible to violence. “As much food and as much clothes and as much medical aid that you send, it doesn’t mean anything as long as their physical lives are still threatened by rebels,” Nyombayire said.

One of the reasons Nyombayire has been fighting so hard against genocide is because of her own experiences in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Although her family is from Kigali, Rwanda, Nyombayire was born in the Congo where her family was forced to live under refugee status because of the situation in Rwanda. Two months after the genocide, when Nyombayire was almost eight years old, her family moved back to Rwanda and found their city in ruins. “We found the country devastated and completely destroyed,” Nyombayire said. “When the militia was losing the war and fleeing, they made sure to destroy anything that could be of use to anyone who came after them.”

Even though Nyombayire was only eight at the time, she knew that she wanted to be part of the rebuilding of Rwanda. “I wanted to be involved in building Rwanda because I knew how hard it was for my parents to not be allowed to be there and because I know how hard people worked to be able to return,” Nyombayire said.

This drive is apparent in all of Nyombayire’s work, both for the GI-Net and in the classroom. “She has a sense of what is at stake in whatever we are discussing,” associate professor of political science Cynthia Halpern said. “She has a way of understanding that it is part of an ongoing political shuffle. It is not just an abstract academic quest, but politics is a living reality that people suffer from daily.”

It is this understanding and way of thinking that has helped keep Nyombayire motivated and working on GI-Net. “Her experiences and her ability to think about them and encompass them and not be destroyed by them, but on the contrary be formed by them, [have] made her very capable of trying to do something about it,” Halpern said.

To everyone who has met her, it is clear that Nyombayire is dedicated to social change and stopping genocide.

“Stephanie is just incredibly committed to the cause of ending the genocide in Darfur and fighting genocide everywhere,” Susannah Gund ’08 said, who has worked with Nyombayire on the GI-Net. “She is very passionate about her work, and is able to bring personal perspective and a lot of drive to it.” It is this passion that motivates those around her and has made her stand out, both here at Swarthmore and in Rwanda.

“Stephanie can do anything that she wants to and will, I have no doubt,” Halpern said. “I think she will be one of the outstanding voices of her generation. We need people like her.”

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