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SURF embarks on first official visit to Rwanda
London – 20th October 2005
The Rwandan Survivors Fund (SURF) today embarks on its first official visit to Rwanda. Led by SURF Founder and Director, Mary Kayitesi-Blewitt, the visit will give a group of 12 donors, partners and trustees of SURF to visit for themselves the projects that SURF supports and to meet survivors to hear first hand their testimonies.
The weeklong visit is the first time that SURF has organised a trip in an official capacity to Rwanda. It will serve as a pilot for future visits which in time it is hoped will include teachers and students too. Participants will get the opportunity to meet survivors of the genocide, in particular widows and orphans, and will visit health clinics and co-operative ventures that SURF supports, as well as villages and mass graves built by SURF money.
The highlight of the visit will be the launch of SURF’s Programme of Antiretroviral Treatment for Women Survivors of the Genocide Raped and Infected with HIV/AIDS. Through a grant of £4.25 million from the UK Department for International Development, and working alongside one of SURF’s partner organisations PACFA, the first of 2,500 women survivors will begin the programme of treatment that will enable them to live a normal life again. Participants will meet a number of the beneficiaries, as well as a number of SURF’s other grassroots partner organisations, including AVEGA and IBUKA, who are working with survivors in the field.
Commenting on the trip, Director of SURF, Mary Kayitesi-Blewitt, said:
“The trip will give some of our key stakeholders a unique opportunity to see first hand the work that we undertake. In my view, there is nothing comparable to first-hand experience. Literally “seeing is believing” when it comes to understanding the genocide, and its aftermath.” She added: “The trip is being facilitated by survivors and the agenda has been developed by survivors too, thus helping to empower those involved and to show a side to survivors that is often overlooked. It will also give survivors the opportunity to speak directly to people who are in a position to make a difference.”
Participants include representatives from the Holocaust Educational Trust, Charities Advisory Trust, Africa Educational Trust, Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and Lindean Trust.
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