Thriving Futures Start with ASYV
Each year, over 500 young people, ages 14 to 22, from vulnerable backgrounds call the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village (ASYV) home. We offer our students a holistic program focused on education and building resilience, confidence, and career skills. We also offer a community of support—a Village family. Our graduates go on to build thriving futures for themselves and their communities.
As a Center of Excellence, we share components of our student-centered, trauma-informed approach with hundreds more educators and young people from across Rwanda.
Our Name
Founded in response to the orphan crisis caused by the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda, Agahozo-Shalom is a place where "tears are dried" (from the Kinyarwanda word "agahozo") and where youth from vulnerable backgrounds can “live in peace” (from the Hebrew word "shalom").
ASYV was inspired by Yemin Orde, a youth village established in 1953 to care for orphans of the Holocaust. Our founder, Anne Heyman, and our founding executive director, Sifa Nsengimana, designed our program to best serve young people in Rwanda.
You can find out more about our history here.
“Stepping into ASYV for the first time—the safety, the community, the support, the big smiles from strangers, the tight hugs—it just felt unreal. I promised myself I would not leave ASYV as the same Hodali who walked in. And I’m not. I’m different. And the same goes for my grademates. We are a class defined by our creativity, resilience, and unity. Whatever path we take, we have the tools it takes to rise.”
Our Approach
Our Village campus in Rwanda’s Eastern Province provides students with a supportive living environment, including campus homes and a live-in staff Mama. Our top-notch secondary school education emphasizes critical thinking, career readiness, digital skills, and entrepreneurship.
Through our health and wellness program, students receive medical and mental health care and an interactive education in life skills topics such as sexual and reproductive health, gender equity, and financial literacy. All student-facing staff, including teachers, receive trainings in providing trust-based, trauma-informed care.
In Life Enrichment Applied Programs (LEAP), our students explore athletics, arts, and student-led clubs in subjects from sign language to robotics. Through these activities, our young people build passion, confidence, and practical skills.
We also offer our students opportunities to explore their interests and build their career skills in our state-of-the-art campus facilities, including our science center; our performance amphitheater; our music recording studio; and our culinary arts, sewing, and hairdressing studios.
All aspects of Village life are designed to support students to heal from past traumas, dream big, and achieve those dreams.
“When I arrived at ASYV, I struggled with an untold grief I had trouble discussing with anyone. My healing process started as I got interested in poetry and acting. I began talking about my troubles.”
Our core values
Our core values inspire all of our work, focusing our staff on the best interests of the child and helping our students to create a community dedicated to building empowered and self-reliant lives.
Values shared by Rwandan and Jewish traditions are also at the heart of ASYV's mission. Just as Rwandan culture emphasizes communal responsibility and care for the vulnerable through concepts like ubudehe (solidarity) and agaciro (dignity), Jewish tradition emphasizes tikkun olam (repairing the world) and tikkun halev (healing the heart).
Our mission
Through healing, education, and love, the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village empowers orphaned and vulnerable Rwandan youth to build lives of dignity and contribute to a better world.
The plan
Since first opening our gates, ASYV has made steady and significant progress in increasing our students' success and well-being. Our 2022–2025 strategic plan, Fostering Healing, Self-Sufficiency, and Sustainability, outlines how we will continue to strengthen our program's ability to provide all our students with what they need to thrive.
