FoRR on CNN

Please take a look at a nice article about FoRR and the charity’s journey on the CNN site :

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/03/08/sport/rwanda-rugby-post-genocide/

 

IT STARTS OUT : An estimated one million people were killed during a 100-day period, among them Tharcisse’s father and two brothers. Aged 13, he was forced to flee his home and then the supposed safe shelter of a camp to stay alive with his mother, sisters and remaining brothers. However, he has been able to slowly and steadily heal his emotional wounds thanks to an unlikely source of solace — the game of rugby. “With rugby, I feel alive,” says Tharcisse, one of the country’s first players, a former international with national side the Silverbacks, and now the general secretary of Rwandan Rugby. “I feel like I’m running to the future,” he adds. “It can bring you great joy and you don’t think about the past. When rugby started here, people were still thinking about the past, about the genocide. The game just brings so much unity with other people.”

Prior to 2001, rugby barely existed in the “Land of a Thousand Hills.” Bar the occasional game between ex-pats, it was unheard of in the East African country. Football was king, and still is — the other key sports in Rwanda being basketball, volleyball and cycling. But that all changed in 2001, with the visit of a British charity worker seeking to find a purpose in life. Emma Rees was unsure what to do after completing her university degree, and traveled to Rwanda with Voluntary Service Overseas. She started throwing around a rugby ball with school kids, and has since become a sort of modern-day William Webb Ellis — the schoolboy credited as being rugby’s original founder in the 1820s — for one particular country. Rees first took the game to schools, and the following year the Ministry of Sport granted approval for the formation of the Rwandan Rugby Federation. Two years later the Friends of Rwandan Rugby charity was formed………..