The Origin of Anything Is Possible

By Shiri Sandler, Managing Director, ASYV

Bonfils (left) and Claude (right) reunite at an ASYV Young Leadership Committee event benefitting the Village.

In 2018, I was driving with two of our alumni, Claude Irankunda and Bonfils Habiyambere, to an event in Rochester, New York. They were regaling me with stories of being in the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village while it was being built.  You see, our founder, Anne Heyman, was told it would take years to build an entire village. But Anne didn’t accept that. She wanted to start welcoming kids as soon as she could, without wasting any time, so we welcomed kids class by class, and built the Village alongside them. The first kids arrived in December 2008.

Claude Irankunda was among those earliest students, and he and Bonfils were telling me what it was like to live in the Village in those early days. He told me that when he saw them breaking ground to build what would become our amphitheater, he thought they were building a swimming pool.

While perhaps technically possible, constructing a swimming pool in the hills of Rwanda’s Eastern Provence would not be easy—or in any way affordable for a nonprofit. So, all of us laughing, I said to him, “Really, you thought there was going to be a swimming pool?” He replied, completely earnest, “Shiri, you have to understand. I thought if the Village is possible, then anything is possible.” I realized he had spoken to the deep emotional truth of the Village—our kids don’t believe a place like this could exist, at least not for them, until they arrive. When the assumptions of their old lives are shattered, they realize that perhaps there are no limits. That perhaps anything is possible.