BY MINNIE KARANJA

Empathy enables us to understand, have compassion and to reach out to people in order to ease their pain or burdens. Survivors Fund (SURF) was established in 1997 to empower genocide survivors by Mary Kayitesi Blewitt, OBE who lost more than 50 family members in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.

SURF works with survivors – led organizations to develop and deliver, fundraise and advocate for, monitor and deliver programs that rebuild the lives and empower survivors of the genocide against the Tutsi. Some of the organizations that work with SURF include but not limited to Association of Widows of the Genocide (AVEGA Agahozo), Association of students Survivors (AERG), Solace ministries and Kanyarwanda.