Voices of Rwanda is dedicated to recording and preserving testimonies of Rwandans, and to ensuring that their stories inform the world about genocide and inspire a global sense of responsibility to prevent human rights atrocities.

On April 7, 1994, Rwanda descended into genocide. Over the course of 90 days, over eight hundred thousand Tutsi were killed by their Hutu neighbors with the implicit permission of a passive international community.

Voices of Rwanda recognizes the need of the rescapés to share their stories and the value of their histories for all people. Toward that end, Voices of Rwanda has begun a campaign to film testimonies of Rwandans and to archive them, in both Rwanda and the United States. The testimonies will be made available as a resource for historians, psychologists, activists, journalists, artists, and future generations of Rwandans.

 

Methodology
The testimony is a guided oral history of each survivor’s life, from childhood until the present. These accounts even reach back into time when individuals share stories from their parents and grandparents, proverbs, and even songs, all of which help to contextualize the genocide in Rwanda’s broader history.

While the Voices of Rwanda methodology has evolved over the past four years to an open-ended process with no time limit, our conviction that we exist as an organization to listen and to serve the individuals who share their testimonies has always remained constant.

Every testimony that Voices of Rwanda facilitates is conducted with the utmost care including the visual aesthetic, an essential element in the recording process. Extra time is invested to ensure that each testimony is beautifully photographed, resulting in a document both respectful of the individual and capable of conveying his or her life stories without visual distraction. 

Education
Educational outreach is central to Voices of Rwanda’s mission. It is imperative that young adults gain an understanding of genocide and the conditions that give rise to it. To accomplish this, testimonies from the archive will be used to create a genocide curriculum for high school students across the United States. The video library will also be made available to museums, schools, and other learning institutions worldwide. It is Voices of Rwanda’s hope that greater awareness about genocide can help future generations and leaders take decisive action and ultimately, prevent such atrocities.

As vast amounts of material are being collected, Voices Of Rwanda is also designing innovative tools to make the testimonies highly accessible. The audio-visual content of the archive is aligned with written transcripts, enabling the entire collection to be browsed using the spoken content of the video testimonies. With this process, relevant search results can be presented as precise video clips, in addition to full testimonies. Furthermore, the transcripts will be linked to geographic interfaces and visual timelines. These technological features will provide those who may not be literate or familiar with traditional Boolean searching with other ways to explore the video collection and ultimately allow for a more democratic access to the stories.