TRANSCRIPT
Gissele: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content. And if you’d like to support the podcast, you can go to buymeacoffee.com/loveandcompassion.
Gissele: Today, we’re gonna be talking about true reconciliation. Our guest today is Celestin Gariyunka, who is a humanitarian and development professional with over 15 years experience in organizational leadership, humanitarian programming, refugee protection, access to justice, peace building, research, education, and partnership management.
Gissele: He currently serves as executive director of Prison Fellowship Rwanda, providing strategic leadership for programs in justice, rehabilitation and reintegration, refugee protection, MHPS, disability inclusion, mediation, and community development. He holds a master’s in in economics from the [00:01:00] Independent University of Kigali, a bachelor’s degree in mathematics education from the University of Rwanda, and financial management specialization certification from Cornell University, US.
Gissele: Celestin joined Prison Fellowship Rwanda in 2020 as a community-based protection officer and field coordinator, and he became head of programs in 2022. Please join me in welcoming Celestin. Hey. Hello.
Celestin: Hello. How are you?
Gissele: I’m good. I’m so excited to speak to you. I love the reconciliation work that you guys are doing over there, and especially in a world that feels so, so divided.
Gissele: Yeah. It’s such an important conversation to have. I was wondering if you could tell the audience a little bit about how y- the organization got started.
Celestin: Thank you so much, Gissele. It’s an honor to be here, and we thank you for creating a platform that reminds everyone that love and compassion are not simply beautiful words . But they are powerful [00:02:00] forces that can transform individuals, families, communities, and even countries.
Celestin: I’m delighted to share the journey of Prison Fellowship Rwanda and what we have learned about healing, reconciliation, and peace building with more than thirty-two years in Rwanda. Our organization Prison Fellowship Rwanda, to understand it well, I think we need to understand or to remember Rwanda’s history.
Celestin: As many of you knows, after the nineteen ninety-four genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, our country was left deeply wounded with more than a million people killed in just one hundred days, with m- families that were torn apart and communities were divided. The, the prisons became very much overcrowded, and millions of people carried visible and invisible wounds.
Celestin: [00:03:00] So in nineteen ninety-five, one year after the genocide the Prison Fellowship Rwanda was established because we believed rebuilding Rwanda requires more than rebuilding roads and institutions. It requires also rebuilding hearts, relationship, and hope. And our first work as Prison Fellowship Rwanda was to enter into prisons, preach hope, encourage repentancy, pray with inmates, and remind them that although they had committed terrible crimes, they had not lost their human dignity or their potential to change.
Celestin: So over time, we learned that spiritual transformation is essential, but also it’s it’s not only one part of the journey. So we established other programs like emotional healing, restorative justice, [00:04:00] restoring relationships between offenders and and victims, practical skills, and even community mediation.
Celestin: So from there, our organization has grown from a, a group of of pastors that do prison evangelism to a full operation organization of almost one hundred full-time staff today. And we run many programs, including mental health and psychosocial support legal aid, youth development, livelihood programs, and community reconciliation one of the remarkable activity was what we call Reconciliation Village Program that we started in 2003 where we built houses for genocide f- survivors and genocide perpetrators that that requested forgiveness [00:05:00] and and they were forgiven, and we put their families together in what we call reconciliation villages.
Celestin: So that, those are places where genocide survivors and former perpetrators, they voluntarily live together after truth, accountability, after remorse and forgiveness. And now that is the organization we are talking about. Yeah. Thank you so much.
Gissele: Yeah. Beautiful. Let’s talk about the work that you do regarding prison reform.
Gissele: Can you describe what you do to help prisoners change for the better?
Celestin: It’s not easy. Yeah. And what I can say is that Even by the go- the government has changed the name. Here in Rwanda we don’t call prisons, we call correctional facility because- … there is a philosophy that prisons were established in the past with one vision, to punish people.
Celestin: But our [00:06:00] orientation today is rehabilitation. So we do this by integrating all programs that that re-restore the human dignity, that restore the relationship, that build the true person that we want, the, the true citizen that we want to be or
Celestin: to… we want to make in the future. So when we say prison reform, at Prison Fellowship Rwanda, we believe every person is more than the worst decision they have ever made. We know that justice is important, but people must accept responsibility for the crimes they committed. And accountability at, and transformation can exist together.
Celestin: It’s not holding someone accountable of the crimes, but also helping them to be transformed. So our rehabilitation program, it’s holistic. So it begins with evangelism, helping people to rediscover [00:07:00] hope, purpose, to repent, and to re- to restore their moral responsibility. And from there we provide restorative justice.
Celestin: We provide trauma healing and mental health support to those inmates. We provide life skills and family restoration, including also education and vocational training. And we also support livelihood programs so that a person undergoing those, all those services of correction services, get a, a holistic rehabilitation, but also be well prepared for integration back to the community.
Celestin: So unless those deeper wounds are addressed, changing behavior becomes much more difficult. And that is we, what we say by experience. Unless the inner part of the person that made him to commit [00:08:00] such crimes is changed. So we… You can’t say that this one committed genocide, killed 100 people.
Celestin: He was imprisoned 15 or 20 years, but without other programs that can transform him, so he will go out with the same mindset, the same behavior. So our program is to make sure that prisons Or correctional facility are place, are space for transformation, for healing, for life skills, for family restoration, for reintegration, a holistic reintegration program.
Celestin: And we often- … said that rehabilitation is not simply preparing someone to leave the correctional facility. It’s preparing someone to return home as a responsible father, as a responsible mother, as a responsible neighbor or citizen, as an element for [00:09:00] peace building, not a troublemaker as as many people think.
Gissele: And that’s what I love about your organization because the focus is one of true rehabilitation, right?
Gissele: In many ways Rwanda is ahead of its time in terms of not viewing prison as a punishment, but rather as a stepping stone towards transformation, and so I think that’s really essential.
Gissele: Yeah. How do you bring victims and perpetrators together in reconciliation in a way that perhaps honors also the fact that the, the victims have been harmed by the perpetrators? Yeah. So how do you bring them in reconciliation- Yeah … in a way that’s safe and supportive for both sides?
Celestin: Yeah. I think this is this is the most delicate and perhaps the most inspiring part of our work.
Celestin: Reconciliation- … is something that never forced. In Rwanda we had a very terrible experience. Rwanda, we are one community. We have one culture. We speak one language. [00:10:00] But- One circumstance in 1994, one big part of the majority of Rwandans took arms and killed the other part of Rwandans. In 100 days, three months, killed almost…
Celestin: Even more because we are still discovering bodies of people killed in the genocide. More than a million people killed in, in, in 100 days. It’s terrible. But after that, we experienced that reconciliation, it doesn’t limit. It doesn’t have limits. Every crime, every situation, reconciliation, you have seen that it is something possible and can be done everywhere.
Celestin: So You we have never forced someone to reconcile to another one. We have seen that forgiveness cannot be [00:11:00] demanded. Even trust, building trust cannot be rushed. It’s something that begins with truths, with a process. Through restorative justice programs we put offenders in a place and they learn.
Celestin: And offenders acknowledge responsibility without finding excuses and understand the human impact of the harm they caused. That is, it’s
Celestin: a long process, but that is the main target, to make sure that the offenders, they are put in a position to understand and acknowledge the responsibility and even the, the human impact they caused. But also we prepare the victims. The victims receive trauma healing, counseling, and psychosocial support before even thinking of any dialogue or meeting with the perpetrators, the offenders.
Celestin: So we use several [00:12:00] complementary approach Among them we have what we call social therapy. It’s an approach that we developed that were developed by psychologists that helps small groups to rebuild trust through structured conversations, mutual listening , and collective problem solvings.
Celestin: We also have what we call smart family therapy, where we put families, especially families of perpetrators and families of survivors or victims, we bring them together to heal collectively, and even helping them to discover that they are not alone in their pain, and they begin supporting one another. But also this, all those, those program cannot be built alone by us, like civil society.
Celestin: We are [00:13:00] also thankful to the government that the government of Rwanda, they established a philosophy, what we call Ndi Umunyarwanda. I’m a Rwandan. This is a, a narrative that reminds people that before anything else We are all one people. We are all one Rwandan sharing one future. So it strengthens a common identity as a Rwandan, not as a, a different tribe or different regional divisions, putting divisions aside, the past divisions aside, and building a common identity together.
Celestin: So one of our most successful approach that helped us to put the victims and the perpetrators together is what we call action-based reconciliation model, where we have learned that reconciliation becomes [00:14:00] stronger when people do something meaningful together. So rather than s- maybe talking about peace, survivors, former perpetrators they…
Celestin: Survivors and former perpetrators, they farm together. They are put into cooperative. They do farming together. They build houses together. They weave baskets together. And even they save money together. They do some group of saving together, and they solve community problem together. All those action that are being made together, they build trust.
Celestin: The trust grows through everyday life. And this approach comes to life in our eight reconciliation villages that were built by Prison Fellowship Rwanda together with our partners. So imagine maybe walking into a village where the [00:15:00] person who survived genocide and the person who participated in the genocide, who killed people, and they live together.
Celestin: Sometimes they are direct victim and perpetrator, but they live together. Their children play together. They are– They attend the same community meetings and community work, what we call here Umuganda, and they help each other in… during the time of sickness. They celebrate wedding together. Even they f- they do– Their children do intermarriage, so they mourn together Everything that they do them together.
Celestin: So that is how we say that our reconciliation program it’s a practical reconciliation that combine all the programs, including mental health, including counseling, including life skills, including income-generating [00:16:00] activities together. And when they are put together, they form a kind of holistic reconciliation model that helps our Rwandans restoring unity and trust.
Celestin: Yeah that’s how I can say that we helped our community, our victims and some, and the perpetrators living together after what happened in Rwanda.
Gissele: Yeah. I just wanna say wow. How important those steps are. Like, the first thing is the importance of reminding-
Gissele: People about their unity, like what brings- … them closer together instead of perpetrating more division .
Gissele: Which is what I see in the North American world. So what you’re doing is reminding them about, one people, like what- yeah … unifying them- yeah … more than separating.
Gissele: The other piece that really is fundamental is having victim and perpetrator closeness, like having them closer together.
Celestin: Yeah.
Gissele: Also, it’s [00:17:00] hard to hate someone when you are close to them, when you get to know them, when- … it’s hard to harm someone if you truly know who they are.
Celestin: Yeah.
Gissele: And but on the flip side, I’m gonna ask a question that I know my listeners would ask. How- … do you ensure that the victim doesn’t get re-victimized by the perpetrator? ‘Cause that’s where the mind goes, where I got harmed once, how do I know I’m not gonna get harmed again?”
Gissele: So how do you make sure- Yeah … that the, the both sides are protected from that?
Celestin: Yeah. In fact- At the beginning, they we have those challenge because even not only the victim, even the perpetrator, they have shame, they, and fear to live together with the people they offended.
Gissele: Yeah.
Celestin: So that is a process to prepare individual, especially for individual cases. We use our psychologist to make sure that the victim, they are well prepared before any meeting, before [00:18:00] even mediation- kind of way, before any step from putting together the people, so they are well prepared. They are… They pass 12 weeks studying, doing- … week sessions of trauma healing, trust building, i- identity building, so that we make sure that those people, even those who still have wounds in the heart, they are treated.
Celestin: They are helped to become strong, and even we don’t force them to go and live together side by side. So we make sure that this process of putting them together comes after a, a long journey of trauma healing and unit- … and reconciliation program. So we prepare both the families of perpetrators and the families of survivors [00:19:00] before putting them together in the same neighborhood.
Celestin: And even after that, they show that maybe the perpetrators and their families, they repent. They speak the truth. They show to the victim where their relatives were put to… the one that were killed, they were put here. They were killed in this way. And after that, after those, all the process comes to the level of asking forgiveness and giving forgiveness.
Celestin: So after that, that is where we reach the extent of putting them together. And at the beginning it’s difficult, butas the time goes, the people, they co- they become friends. They become one family. They c- they are in one neighborhood, and their children play together.
Celestin: It’s a full, a whole, a daily reconciliation program. And we continue monitoring so that in case there is [00:20:00] a a problem, an issue, we can help them to deal with them. Yeah. Thank you.
Gissele: Oh, thank you. The other thing that I think is so brilliant about your program is that the fact that you are using land as a way to join them together, ’cause it was my understanding that part of what happened with the genocide was issues of abundance, right?
Gissele: It’s issues of money, one group having more than the other. And so bringing them together and working together with the land and working together with respect to finances, I think would be really critical in reconciliation. Is that accurate? Yeah.
Celestin: Genocide is not, It is it start by genocide ideology.
Celestin: Genocide ideology means we have one identity and those, they have their identity, and one group want to kill the other group and to finish them. So genocide, it doesn’t… It is not a- [00:21:00] about money or land or about what. It’s that ideology of killing one group and finish them.
Celestin: One important aspect here is to remind people that they are one people. Even so people may have different culture. Even in Rwanda we have one culture. We are all Rwandans. We speak one language. But people may be different. But what we preach here is unity in diversity. People need to understand that they are all human being and they have to respect one another.
Celestin: So this kind of divisions, they need to forget them. They need to understand the harm caused by those division: regional division, ethnic divisions. Because we know that even in one family, one household, if you want divisions, the younger children may form their group, and the elder children, they form their [00:22:00] group, and they hate one another.
Celestin: The important aspect here is to make sure that people understand the identity and the importance of being united instead of being divided. So we do this with the… All our efforts make sure that after all what happened, the people understand the truth and understand the importance of living together the importance of building unit among them, and the importance of fighting together the the divisions and any bad ideology that can separate them.
Celestin: Yeah.
Gissele: Thank you for that. Thank you. So I know that your work not only focuses on restorative justice but also teaching the next generation. Yeah. What work are you doing with children to ensure that the genocide that happened doesn’t happen again?
Celestin: Thank you. Yes, [00:23:00] we also work with children.
Celestin: Currently, we work with the children of prisoners. We have a program called the Promise Pass. Before it was called the Children’s Journey. We support the childrens of inmates. To deal with the issues they are facing. There is for… There are many children who are vulnerable because of their parents who are in correctional facility, who are inmates.
Celestin: So we support them with the education, mentoring, and we know that children are the builders of tomorrow. If we want peace maybe 20 years from now, we must invest in children today. So many young Rwandans were born after the genocide. They did not witne- witness the genocide against the Tutsi
Celestin: directly, but they inherit the, the genocide history. So our responsibility is to help them [00:24:00] inherit wisdom instead of hatred. We make sure that the crimes done by parents, they are not– they don’t affect their children. Especially there are some parents when they are incarcerated when their children visit them, they try to find excuses or to tell the children that they are innocent, and the children grow with the, with hatred against anyone that might be the cause of their father, fathers to be in prison.
Celestin: So we make sure that the youth, they are well-educated. We teach them empathy, peaceful conflict resolution. We teach them leadership and responsible citizenship, unity, resilience, respect for human dignity. But also we support them with education and family strengthening. So in our program, we make sure that there is a space for [00:25:00] youth and children.
Celestin: Not only even the children of prisoners, but also the youth in general. When we do mental health and psychosocial support program, we also h- form the groups of youth, especially youth from families of perpetrators and youth from families of survivors, so that with that youth we build the future together.
Celestin: We build the same understanding of the world we want or the, the Rwanda we want. So we know that our children, they attend the same schools, and they dream about the same future. So we make sure that our youth, they don’t inherit the bad things that that happened to our parents
Gissele: And this is so essential because not only are you tackling with the victim and perpetrator by helping them do trauma healing- Yeah
Gissele: you’re also impacting the next generation, right? And so making sure to stop it at both ends, not just with history, but with actual action, [00:26:00] right? Yeah. Action that will have long-term consequences.
Celestin: Yeah.
Gissele: So I know you focus on skill development and livelihood. How does that connect to peacekeeping, and what are some of the results you have found?
Celestin: Yeah. Yeah. Peace is more than the absence of violence. Peace also requires dignity, hope, and opportunity, so that’s why we invest heavily in collaborative livelihood programs. We do have another program that’s called CoLive or Collaborative Livelihood Programs that, that make sure that we support our beneficiaries, not only to understand peace like a rhetorical, a philosophy, even unit as a philosophy, but peace in action.
Celestin: we make sure that they are… They do some income-generating activities together, like farming cooperatives. we do have women that weave [00:27:00] baskets. We do what we call saving groups and small business. So the, all these economic activities, they create human cooperations. You can’t fight– you can’t hate someone that you are a partner into a business.
Celestin: So you will make sure that you support one another so that you generate income together. So when people depend on one another, they succeed. Yeah. They stop seeing enemies and begin seeing themselves as partners. That’s why livelihood is not only about earning income. It’s a tool for rebuilding trust among citizens, among community.
Celestin: So our action-based reconciliation model teaches us that working together often heals the relationship faster than simply teaching people to live [00:28:00] together. Yeah.
Gissele: Wonderful.
Gissele: I was wondering if you could talk about what role spirituality plays in the healing.
Celestin: the Prison Fellowship Rwanda was started by a prison evangelism.
Celestin: But this time there are many people who don’t understand why evangelism. Not only in Rwanda but worldwide. But evangelism it helps people to re- to rediscover the hope. To to understand that their life has a purpose. Even to help the one that that commit crimes to repent.
Celestin: To understand where the harm caused. But also the most important element of evangelism is to create accountability and moral responsibility towards one another. To make sure that they have a kind of character that do no harm to [00:29:00] one another. So that’s why spirituality, it’s very important, especially in this correctional service programs, where people they do crimes.
Celestin: Sometimes they do crimes because they don’t they don’t understand the importance of doing goods, good things. Or they don’t value one another. Or sometimes they un- they don’t understand why crime is bad. But after evangelism, everyone understand that crime, it’s a very bad things.
Celestin: So that is why we value very much spirituality in our program.
Gissele: Thank you.
Gissele: Peace building is part of your organization’s work. Yeah. And the world seems quite divided right now along political lines, and there are still many wars going on.
Gissele: What do you think is the first step towards people coming together in unity and to see each other’s humanity?
Celestin: Peacebuilding
Celestin: It’s [00:30:00] very Big. All we do is peace building. And, As people who experienced the genocide, the worst genocide in the world, I don’t know the others, but what we have seen in Rwanda is, it’s something terrible. So when we say peace, we understand it that it’s something very important.
Celestin: And to get peace, it make… It is to make sure that everyone understand the importance of giving peace. That is why we focus on either the perpetrators, because
Celestin: they are there because there is something that made them to be there, and also the victims. Those two people, if they are supported, they will build peace one another. Because if you don’t focus on the, the victim, he will make a revenge, and when someone [00:31:00] commit a, a crime, another one revenge, then the next will revenge again, then there will no…
Celestin: There will be no peace in the system. So we want to cut that chain of crimes so that we make peace. So- Peacebuilding is part of… It’s all in our action from unit and reconciliation program, from restorative justice program, from livelihood program. What we do, it’s the the, it, the whole is peacebuilding, so that when we teach people to forgive, to build trust to one another, when we help the community to live together and get income together into livelihood, when we do preach faith or spirituality to human, we want to strengthen that peacebuilding.
Celestin: So in short, [00:32:00] all the activity we are doing here, it’s about to rehabilitate people until they become, they build, they live together in harmony . They see one another as their friends, as partners, as as the same as they see themselves. Yeah.
Gissele: Yeah. And the work that you’re doing is so essential, and what I’m hearing you say is that it’s a multi-pronged approach, right? It’s not just like a one-sided y- yeah … it starts from when you were saying, “We are one Rwanda. We are one people.” Yeah. It starts even just there, and then it goes to, you’re hitting all those multiple prongs.
Gissele: you’re helping the, the victims heal and work on forgiveness. You’re helping the perpetrators heal. You’re educating the children. You’re managing the next generation. So the work that you’re doing is absolutely incredible, and we are very grateful for it – Yeah
Gissele: in terms of helping us continue to generate peace, ’cause peace ripples out.
Celestin: Yeah …
Gissele: a few more questions. What does unconditional love mean to you?
Celestin: [00:33:00] Unconditional love
Celestin: So to me it means recognizing the value of a person
Celestin: without setting some, some criteria. So you are– you know that love is not the absence of justice Love include truth, but also love include accountability. So unconditional love, I understand it like loving the humanity I understand that. For example, if I’m
Celestin: I’m a Rwandan and I meet an American citizen maybe here, or I meet an Iranian citizen here. So I don’t say it that I can love this one, I hate this one. Unconditional love means understanding and recognizing the value of humanity and respecting one another.
Celestin: For [00:34:00] example
Celestin: Imagine two people, maybe living completely alone in the forest. This is an example that I like. And for example, you are lost in the forest and you found your enemy, the people you hate, also lost in the forest
Celestin: And you have no friendship and no relationship. But if you are there together in the forest, would you continue to be enemy? Would you choose to stay alone because you see that the other one you don’t you don’t like him? So I think everyone would choose living together with the one you hate instead of staying alone in the forest That is why the people need to understand that people, they are together because they need one another.
Celestin: People may even have [00:35:00] some, some bitter past, especially for families. Okay? But they, we need to choose to stay together, under- understand each other, forgive and rebuild trust, and eventually care for one another. If you are you are two people hating one another and you are lost in the forest alone, the two, so you will be forced to stay together so that you can protect one another.
Celestin: So that is the philosophy that we need to understand, that we need to stay together as a human being. Yeah.
Gissele: Love that. Thank you for sharing that. Last question. What do you want the audience to know? Where can they find you? Where can they donate or work with your organization? What do you wanna share?
Celestin: Thank you. Prison Fellowship Rwanda It’s a network. We work with the Prison Fellowship International, and it is its presence [00:36:00] is in 100, abou- around 120 countries. But every chapter is independent in its country. So Prison Fellowship Rwanda, we have a website, and we work our work in Rwanda.
Celestin: And we have a website, pfruanda.org. And I have– We have a Twitter account, and we have plenty of opportunities to work together with anyone that that understand that what we are doing is important. So it’s a privilege to work alongside dedicated colleagues, government institutions, faith communities, other civil society organizations, and even international partners who believe that we can change the world together.
Celestin: So our mission is to restore the relationship between individuals, communities [00:37:00] through justice, compassion, healing and hope. So we warmly welcome anyone that that that understand that we can do this job together. The– I like your podcast because after the– knowing that we will be having this session I learned that, Love and compassion is not, it’s not a philosophy, it’s something practical.
Celestin: And I see that there are many opportunities to develop these things and to ensure that we contribute in peace building to the world. So we are very open to researchers, universities, development partners, churches, and any individual interested in working together, building restorative justice and reconciliation to the world.
Celestin: And we are open to share our experience and even testimonies from [00:38:00] our beneficiaries to the world so that we can build peace. Thank you so much.
Gissele: Oh, wow. What a beautiful way to end. And thank you, Celestine, for coming and sharing your wisdom with us and all the amazing work that you’re doing in your organization.
Gissele: Thank you to everyone who tuned in to another episode of Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele. If you like this episode, please share it. We are reaching worldwide. And thanks again. Bye.
Celestin: Bye. Thank you so much.