Romeo Dallaire Scholarship Fund

The Romeo Dallaire Award Fund, established in 2004, provides full tuition, books, and living expenses for qualified sub-Saharan African students wishing to study the English language at Lewis & Clark College for one academic year. Students will enroll in classes with students from around the world in the Academic English Studies program. 

Emmanuel Habimana is our 2012-2013 Romeo Dallaire Scholarship recipient.  He notes that all of his involvement and interest in human rights comes from his experience as a genocide survivor and his need to reunite his community in peace. Most of his work has been “in counseling fellow survivors in unity and reconciliation, helping them with their basic needs, and providing education about genocide to the world.”  

During secondary school, Emmanuel served as Vice-President of his school’s Unity and Reconciliation Club and assisted in organizing athletic and cultural events, as well as “conferences for my peers to discuss issues about ethnicity and the relationship that ethnicity in Rwanda had to the genocide.”  He also held the position of President of the Umuhuza Youth Association in the Nyakabanda sector of Kigali. During this time, he helped to create English classes for fellow youth in his area, and he sponsored public forums about HIV/AIDS education and prevention.

Emmanuel later worked for the Interdisciplinary Genocide Studies Center summer program. The purpose of this program is to bring groups of international college students and teachers to Rwanda every summer to do field studies on the 1994 genocide.  He has worked with students and teachers from the United States, Russia, Australia, Canada, Nigeria, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Since 2010, while enrolled as a student in Kigali Independent University, Emmanuel has been producing and co-directing a documentary about the children who were orphaned by the genocide in Rwanda called The Children Who Lived.  It is being funded by two grants from National Geographic Society and sponsored by an organization called Education for the World.  In this documentary he personally interviews senator Romeo Dallaire, who was the chief commander of UNAMIR in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide and in whose name the Lewis& Clark College Dallaire Scholarship is named. Please view the trailer at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvZUqT7FK-w. 

A message from Emmanuel:  

Sometimes as survivors we feel misunderstood by our fellow Rwandans and the outside world. I contribute to my society by doing projects that raise awareness about the issues we face and helping survivors feel understood and appreciated.”

After completing the Academic English Studies program at Lewis and Clark, I will apply what I’ve been studying by becoming a secondary school English teacher and a writer.  Also, because I have been working on this documentary, I have developed an interest in journalism.  This has given me the dream of applying for a grant to create a human rights magazine in Rwanda, teaching people through the magazine about peace, reconciliation and respect between ethnicities. I will also create a human rights English club at my university where I will apply what I have learned at Lewis and Clark. Lastly, I would like to write a book about my life surviving the genocide and making something of myself in the years after.

How You Can Help

Many students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends are committed to the Romeo Dallaire Award Fund. The primary goal is to permanently endow a scholarship that will provide for one African student to study English at Lewis & Clark for one academic year. An endowment of $200,000 will accomplish this.

Since tuition and residence hall accomodations will be waived by Lewis & Clark and Bon Appetit food services has generously offered a meal plan, 100 percent of donations to this scholarship will be used to cover transportation, books, and supplies for the student.

To make a gift, visit our online giving page.

or contact:

Rebecca Holt ‘01
Senior Development Officer
503-768-7943
rebeccah@lclark.edu

Advisory Committee:

Nicole Aas-Rouxparis
Mark Duntley
Michael Ford
Greg Fredricks
Joann Geddes
Amanda Joyce ‘13
Rich Peck
John Schneider
Dell Smith, Chair
Susan Wynne

Ex Officio Members:

Alina Dumitrasc ‘06
Michael Graham ‘06
Leah Hazard ‘07
Alyssa Kent ‘11
Karena Norton ‘09
Hailey Parsons ‘09
Ashley Smith ‘06