Welcome to APIE’s summer newsletter. Short but very sweet – we hope you will agree! |
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Some celebrations: the new hall and classrooms at Umubano Primary School are now complete and open for business! This two year construction project started with a request from local stakeholders for better provision both within the school and for the wider community. We are so grateful to the Addax and Oryx Foundation as well as the Newmark family for the funding which enabled this to happen, as well as to all other donors and supporters too numerous to name who have helped in so many ways. Thank you all. |
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At the end of the annual 100 days of mourning that remembers those lost in the Genocide Against the Tutsi, every year in Kigali the Ubumuntu Arts Festival is held to mark the beginning of new life and hope for the future. The word 'ubumuntu' is Kinyarwanda for humanity, and the festival aims to ‘create an avenue where people from different walks of life can come together and speak to each other in the language of Art.' This year we were so fortunate to be involved in this very meaningful event. |
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APIE thrives on relationships of so many kinds and our latest collaboration epitomises all that is good about partnership working. With the support of Heather Randall, a NYC-based theatre director, students at Umubano Primary School had the week of their lives, working with American singer-songwriter Alexander Star to compose and perform his new song, ‘Show Me the Way’, at the festival. |
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APIE's Education Manager Rachel has written a blog about the week which you can read here, which details not only what happened, but the impact it has had on everyone involved. Excitingly, Alexander Star’s brand new music video for 'Show Me the Way' also documents the week, with the video as well as the lyrics showing us the way that peace is manifesting in these young people’s hearts and minds, full of life, love and hope for the future. Featuring the students and staff of Umubano Primary School (and APIE!), the video is below: |
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Building on this opportunity we are now working on developing our Education for Peace programme with Aegis Trust. Umubano Primary School is now officially the Lead School for Peace in Rwanda, and in partnership with Aegis we will be beginning to share our ethos and curriculum more widely across the country. We are really excited about the potential of this project, and will keep you updated as the programme develops. Meanwhile, thanks to ongoing partnership work with Heather and others, expressive arts will run through all this work, as we continue to explore the emerging narrative of Rwanda with young people, their teachers and their families, healing and growing together for a peaceful and prosperous future. Thank you to all our subscribers for your ongoing support and engagement with APIE and Umubano Primary School. We look forward to bringing you many more stories, which we hope lift your hearts as they do ours. If you can’t wait until the next newsletter, please find and follow us on Facebook and Instagram where we regularly post stories and highlights from our work in Rwanda. We wish you all a happy and peaceful summer. |
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Your support is what enables our work to continue. If you'd like to get involved in any of our projects, please reach out to our Project Officer at laurenne@apartnerineducation.org. If you'd like to donate, please follow the link below. Thank you. |
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