Kigali Institute of Education (KIE), a teacher training college, in partnership with Britain’s University of Nottingham, are reaping benefits from a course designed to fight the Genocide.

The one-day forum dubbed "Teaching Genocide and Community Cohesion: From Theory to Practice” opened yesterday at the institute.

It is run by the Delphe Project, and provides a platform for students and staff to exchange views on the causes of the Genocide and other sensitive topics like the Holocaust, and their elimination through the teaching profession.

"Learning about the causes of Genocide and how it can be prevented is very important to us as future teachers,” said Francis Ntaganira, a Level Five KIE student in History and Geography.

He added that the project has enabled them acquire concrete ways in which they can actually trace and eliminate the Genocide ideology in the communities they live in.

Ntaganira called upon his colleagues to be at the forefront in the anti-Genocide movement.

The forum was aimed at training KIE students how to employ a range of pedagogies to promote community cohesion in both formal and informal educational settings.

Speaking at the workshop, Jean Leonard Buhigiro, the project Coordinator at KIE, urged teachers trained at KIE to be exemplary in their daily duties by imparting to Rwandan children an education that equips them with life skills and facilitates them  to fight against anything that might divide them.

"We initiated the program after taking into account the results of a parliamentary commission set up in 2009, which established a growing number of cases related to the Genocide ideology in schools,” he said.

"KIE started thinking of methods through which such ideologies can be stopped or completely eradicated in schools by teaching students how to fight against it”.

Buhigiro, who is also the Head of Social Sciences at KIE, mentioned that about 120 students have benefitted from the project, who on their part have imparted the skills to their colleagues at the institute and as well as secondary school students countrywide. 

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