Innocente

Damas Gisimba, director of Gisimba Memorial Centre, cares for 150+ orphans in Gisimba Memorial Center, an orphange on the outskirts of Kigali, Rwanda. Damas Gisimba has been acknowledged as a hero of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda for saving hundreds of lives.

The photographs in this collection were taken in 2005 and 2006 when I led photography workshops to the Gisimba children. My "nephew" Alex Nsegimana lived in the orphanage following the genocide, and after participating in The African Children's Choir was adopted by a family in Oregon. He is now a Sophomore at a University in New York.

I had the honor of meeting up with Damas Gisimba and Alex Nsegimana at The United States Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. in 2007.

Selected photographs from this collection can be found in a documentary produced by The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum(2006): "Defying Genocide:
Choices That Saved Lives" http://www.ushmm.org/conscience/analysis/details.php?content=2007-01-05

Updated June 29, 2011.