A race to benefit Rwandan youth

    The Race4Rwanda 5K run will draw Tufts students and community members to Ellis Oval on Sunday in an effort to raise funds for nonprofits and raise genocide awareness.
    Funds for the race will benefit the Agahozo Shalom Youth Village in Eastern Rwanda; the Medford Family Network, an educational and family support program; and the Welcome Project, a Somerville immigrant advocacy organization.
    The idea for the race came about after a group of 18 Tufts students traveled to Rwanda this May to help at the youth village on a service program sponsored by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC).
    After returning to the Hill, the Tufts undergraduates wanted to continue helping the village. They organized the 5K race at Tufts to raise money and awareness, bringing the impact of their summer travels a bit closer to home.
    The youth village provides a community for children orphaned in the 1994 Rwandan genocide to learn and thrive in a family environment. Intended to eventually be a home for 500 orphans, the village has an arts center, residential housing, a comprehensive high school, athletic fields and a medical clinic.
    Tufts students on the trip interacted with the 125 children currently living at the village, in addition to visiting national monuments and genocide remembrance sites.
    "It was actually incredible," senior Rachel Lieber said. "We lived in the village with them and did some community service around the village. We played games with them and hung out during the day."
    A special project of the JDC, the village's roots lie within Tufts. Anne Heyman, a Tufts Hillel board member, founded Agahozo Shalom in 2006 after hearing a talk on the genocide.
    Lieber, one of the main organizers of the race, praised Heyman's efforts. "It's a way that one woman who was at Tufts really made an incredible difference and [helped] orphans' lives," Lieber said.
    Junior Miki Vizner, another organizer who went on the summer trip, said he hoped the 5K would spread consciousness and concern about genocide.
    "I hope that we raise money and awareness and that it reminds people that it's easy to get wrapped up in your life, but there are problems in the world," Vizner said.
    The students were impressed by the village's ability to provide education and a supportive environment to orphans, a vital part of Rwanda's future.
    "The only wealth Rwanda has is people," said Patrick Karuretwa, a graduate student at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy who was a soldier in the Rwandan Patriotic Front during the genocide. "Rwanda is such a small country, five hundred or a thousand [of today's] children could be running Rwanda in fifteen years."
    Vizner said that Rwanda has many natural resources, but that underlying tensions from the genocide remain. "The country has this weird feeling of being extremely beautiful but has this dark and ugly past," he said.
    Lieber hopes that Race4Rwanda will draw students' attention to the village's goals.
    "It will raise awareness about the village and about the incredible future it's providing for the orphans of the genocide," Lieber said. "It has the potential to get Tufts students interested in and informed about genocides and other humanitarian crises."
    The race will start at 11 a.m. on Sunday, and will be followed at noon by other activities, including a speech by Karuretwa and booths set up by organizations like the JDC, Tufts Hillel and the Rwandan community in Boston. There will be Rwandan music playing, and a young genocide survivor will read poetry.
    Rwandans will share information about their culture and homeland at a booth at the race. Karuretwa said that approximately 50 Rwandans from the Boston area, mostly students and some professionals, plan to attend.
    The race begins and ends at the Ellis Oval; the route, designed for both runners and walkers, will run through Medford and Somerville. Prizes will be awarded to the top male and female finishers, as well as participants with the best Halloween costumes.
    Participants can still register the day of the race. "It's not too late to sign up. You will get an extra hour of sleep for daylight savings," Lieber noted.