Ep. 108 – Can Enemies Live Together? How One Organization Is Creating True Lasting Peace

TRANSCRIPT

Gissele: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content. And if you’d like to support the podcast, you can go to buymeacoffee.com/loveandcompassion.

Gissele: Today, we’re gonna be talking about true reconciliation. Our guest today is Celestin Gariyunka, who is a humanitarian and development professional with over 15 years experience in organizational leadership, humanitarian programming, refugee protection, access to justice, peace building, research, education, and partnership management.

Gissele: He currently serves as executive director of Prison Fellowship Rwanda, providing strategic leadership for programs in justice, rehabilitation and reintegration, refugee protection, MHPS, disability inclusion, mediation, and community development. He holds a master’s in in economics from the [00:01:00] Independent University of Kigali, a bachelor’s degree in mathematics education from the University of Rwanda, and financial management specialization certification from Cornell University, US.

Gissele: Celestin joined Prison Fellowship Rwanda in 2020 as a community-based protection officer and field coordinator, and he became head of programs in 2022. Please join me in welcoming Celestin. Hey. Hello.

Celestin: Hello. How are you?

Gissele: I’m good. I’m so excited to speak to you. I love the reconciliation work that you guys are doing over there, and especially in a world that feels so, so divided.

Gissele: Yeah. It’s such an important conversation to have. I was wondering if you could tell the audience a little bit about how y- the organization got started.

Celestin: Thank you so much, Gissele. It’s an honor to be here, and we thank you for creating a platform that reminds everyone that love and compassion are not simply beautiful words . But they are powerful [00:02:00] forces that can transform individuals, families, communities, and even countries.

Celestin: I’m delighted to share the journey of Prison Fellowship Rwanda and what we have learned about healing, reconciliation, and peace building with more than thirty-two years in Rwanda. Our organization Prison Fellowship Rwanda, to understand it well, I think we need to understand or to remember Rwanda’s history.

Celestin: As many of you knows, after the nineteen ninety-four genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, our country was left deeply wounded with more than a million people killed in just one hundred days, with m- families that were torn apart and communities were divided. The, the prisons became very much overcrowded, and millions of people carried visible and invisible wounds.

Celestin: [00:03:00] So in nineteen ninety-five, one year after the genocide the Prison Fellowship Rwanda was established because we believed rebuilding Rwanda requires more than rebuilding roads and institutions. It requires also rebuilding hearts, relationship, and hope. And our first work as Prison Fellowship Rwanda was to enter into prisons, preach hope, encourage repentancy, pray with inmates, and remind them that although they had committed terrible crimes, they had not lost their human dignity or their potential to change.

Celestin: So over time, we learned that spiritual transformation is essential, but also it’s it’s not only one part of the journey. So we established other programs like emotional healing, restorative justice, [00:04:00] restoring relationships between offenders and and victims, practical skills, and even community mediation.