Last weekend, our friends at the Genocide Intervention Network, or GI-NET, launched their Carl Wilkens Fellowship program with a powerful two-day leadership retreat in Washington, D.C.
Named after the only American to remain in Rwanda throughout the 1994 genocide, the year-long Carl Wilkens Fellowship trains emerging activist leaders to build political will in their own communities and expand the anti-genocide constituency on a local level. Twenty exceptional individuals from across the United States were chosen to be part of this year’s inaugural fellowship class. The diverse class includes an acclaimed genocide scholar, a filmmaker, busy professionals from all walks of life, educators, retirees, and full-time parents.
I attended an informal meeting here in Washington last Friday evening where Carl Wilkens addressed this first class of fellows gathered in his name. Tears filled Wilkens’ eyes as he recounted how relationships with his own neighbors had saved his family’s life in Rwanda and emphasized that the anti-genocide movement draws its most enduring strength from each individual’s capacity to build relationships within his or her own community and to transform those relationships into political will to end genocide.
Jessica Reveri, GI-NET’s Membership Coordinator, who oversees the Carl Wilkens Fellowship program noted that following the retreat, the participants expressed thanks for the strength that they drew from their peers and the renewed commitment they feel to building a world without genocide.
"I feel like I have met my tribe,” wrote Susan Smylie, a fellow and mother of four from Texas. “I had no idea how amazing this fellowship was going to be — I learned SO MUCH and am SO ENERGIZED!”
Some fellows even made headlines in their local media outlets. Dr. Lee Ann DeReus, a professor at Penn State- Altoona, was the subject of a local news segment on WJACTV.
The Genocide Intervention Network hopes to expand the program each year, with the ultimate goal of having one active fellow in every congressional district by 2020. Here at Enough, we applaud this crucial step in the path to building an informed and effective anti-genocide constituency and we look forward to working with GI-NET and this year’s class of fellows at such an important time for our cause.
GI-NET staff members Janessa Goldbeck and Jessica Reveri contributed to this post.