From the London Times..... Anne Heyman; New York lawyer who threw her energies into creating a youth village in Rwanda for the orphans of the 1990s genocide thetimes.co.uk, Thursday, 27 February 2014, 00:01 GMT , 1002 Words, © 2014 Times Newspapers Ltd. All rights reserved (Document TIMEUK0020140227ea2r000vo) Anne Heyman took the humanatarian catastrophe of the Rwandan genocide and from it fashioned a project to provide a future for hundreds of the country’s newly created orphans. She had already given up her career as a high-flying New York lawyer to dedicate herself to philanthrophy when, in 2005, she learnt of the scale of Rwanda’s tragedy and resolved to do something about it. The result was remarkable. Heyman, devoutly Jewish, used the example of how the newly-founded State of Israel cared for tens of thousands of children left parentless by the Holocaust in youth villages, in effect residential communties where orphans could be educated and pointed towards a better future. Showing her trademark passion, energy and talent for finding wealthy donors, she raised $12 million to establish the 144-acre Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village in 2008, set amid the lakes and hills in the east of the country. She planned the community high on a hill because, she said, “children need to see far to go far. The community now has around 500 residents in 32 dormitories, many of them now orphans of victims of Aids. When news of her death reached there she was mourned as a “second mother. Anne Elaine Heyman was born in Pretoria, South Africa, in 1961. She lived in Cape Town until she was 15, and then emigrated with her family to Boston. In 1978, during her post-high school stint in Israel, she fell in love with fellow gap-year student Seth Merrin, who shared her passion for “tikkun olam — an ancient rabbinic phrase that means “mending the world. They married in 1986. She attended the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1982, and then spent another year in Israel before returning to the US to go to Washington University Law School and later Columbia Law School. By the time she put her career on hold after her first son was born in 1994, she was assistant district attorney in Manhattan. However, she was too energetic to settle for motherhood alone. She volunteered for various organisations, from a charity that cares for the Jewish elderly in Manhattan to a project to promote understanding between Jewish and Arab children in Israel. In 2005 she stumbled upon what would become her unique calling. Heyman had established a lecture programme about ethical issues for Jewish students and invited a survivor of the Rwandan genocide to speak. He said that the country’s prospects looked bleak unless a solution was found to the large orphan problem created during the genocide of the mid-1990s. Heyman, excitable and quick thinking, embarked on what was to her a simple train of thought. What was needed, she concluded, was to import the Israeli solution to Rwanda and build villages which, as far as possible, created a family feel within an institutional setting. For months, she worked her way through books about Rwanda and genocide, and started planning her village. She took a lead from one Israeli youth village in particular — Yemin Orde near Haifa, set up by British philanthropists in 1953. Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village opened in the Rwamagana district in 2008. She chose the name as she was dashing out to a meeting with potential backers in 2006. Heyman was embarrassed that she did not have a name for the project, so her daughter searched the internet for words in Rwanda’s Kinyarwanda language, and found agahozo, which means where tears are dried. On its opening a long line of orphaned teenagers waited outside. Many had their possessions in paper bags and no photographs of their murdered parents. Some did not even know how old they were. Ethiopian Jews who had grown up in the Israeli camps were employed as counsellors, and local women — many of whom had lost husbands and children in the genocide — were brought in to make the dormitries into homes. Today the village includes a school, a farm, workshops where trades are taught and a studio in which gospel music is recorded. A shrewd fundraiser, Heyman worked hard to secure international donor support for the village and left it on a firm financial footing. Part of her plan involved leasing land in the village for a solar field, which will be active by this summer, in the hope that it will ensure the village’s financial stability and provide energy sustainability for the area. She calculated that within three years, the solar field and the outsourcing company will provide a third to a half of the village’s operating costs. Heyman chaired the Agahozo-Shalom board from its establishment, and was known for her hands-on approach to the village, visiting half a dozen times a year. On those visits she shunned offers of special treatment and insisted on eating in the main dining room with the children. She often took members of her family with her, wanting her three children to feel kinship with the orphans. After her death, her youngest child, Jonathan, a gap-year student, went to the village to mourn with the orphans and to volunteer there. His brother Jason, a film-maker, plans to join the Agahozo-Shalom board and his sister Jenna, an undergraduate, organises lectures at her university about genocide. Heyman is also survived by her husband. She was strongly Zionist, and took the unusual step of raising her children in New York with Hebrew as their first language. She hoped to retire to Israel. She died after falling from her horse while competing in an equestrian competition in Florida. The village announced her death with a quote from a Rwandan proverb: “Death is nothing so long as one can survive through one’s children. Anne Heyman, lawyer and philanthropist, was born on June 16, 1961. She died from cardiac arrest brought on by a head injury, on January 31, 2014, aged 52
Posted on: Thu, 27 Feb 2014 18:45:13 +0000
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