Summary of an article that appeared in Haaretz English Newspaper - Week's Ends

This is a story of Jewish philanthropy and the desire to share the Israeli experience while easing the suffering of another nation. It is not a mere coincidence that an Israeli was chosen to establish a youth village for Rwandan orphans. Israel has much experience in absorbing immigrants, many of them children and youth who arrived without their families, beginning with orphans of the Holocaust to the recent immigration waves from Russia and Ethiopia.
 
Nir Lahav, a graduate of the Mandel Leadership Institute, was chosen for the challenging job of overseeing the creation and then directing the youth village in Africa. He left everything behind and moved to Africa with his family, in order to establish the youth village for orphans of the Rwandan genocide.

“In order to take care of them, I have to know them,” explains Lahav. “Otherwise you cannot help them. It’s easier said than done, as Rwandan culture doesn’t make it easy to get people to speak about intimate matters. It is a culture that respects privacy, and when the [local] counselors opposed the idea of engaging in personal conversations with the children, I pulled my hair out, but realized I needed a different approach.”

Before his work in the nonprofit realm Lahav worked as a lawyer and then in business, in particular as one of the owners of the organic food company Adama. When he reached the age of 40 he began to search for a new direction in life and was accepted to the Mandel School for Educational Leadership. Following his studies at Mandel he joined the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) Israel in order to promote initiatives of at-risk populations. During his time at the JDC he was responsible, amongst other things, for establishing “This is Business” – a project through which at-risk youth learn to start businesses and then manage them, in order to earn money as well as to learn a trade for the future. Afterwards he ran the Jewish Agency’s Youth Futures Division for four years, until he was offered the position at the youth village.

Even though Lahav’s contract ends this year he says that, had family conditions permitted, he would stayed at the village for an additional year. “It is an astounding personal and family experience in which you can find everything – an unusual challenge, an opportunity to give, “widen one’s horizons, also lots of Zionism and promoting Israel’s image,” he says proudly. “It is about time that we all change the provincial concepts by which we live. No ambassador, not even the best there is, could have done for Israel what this project has done. Less than two years after the village was established, it is well-known to all the decision-makers in Rwanda, from the president down. Israel’s name is praised everywhere. If we are looking for a better way to promote and explain Israel, this is it.

To read more (in Hebrew) click here