After the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, many survivors lost their families and had no place to call home or a family to lean on. This is how the idea of Rwandan Graduates Genocide survivors – Groupe des Anciens Etudiants Rescapés du Génocide (GAERG), came to life in 2003.
The organisation was created to become a new family of survivors of the genocide who were graduating from universities, enabling them to regain a sense of belonging and to overcome the consequences of the Genocide against the Tutsi which took the lives of 1,074,017 in 1994, of whom 934,218 have been identified by name, and to become active members of Rwandan society.
Since its creation, GAERG has worked in collaboration with other survivors’ organizations under the IBUKA Umbrella to create a sense of belonging through artificial families, with a father, a mother and children. This model of grouping them into families came as a mechanism of covering the gap of parents by enabling orphans to raise their peers. In our families, none of the children share DNA; the only thing linking us is that we are all the survivors of the genocide against the Tutsi.
