Yale Bulletin and Calendar

February 22, 2008|Volume 36, Number 19

Zachary Kaufman is shown here helping to clear the site of what will be Rwanda's first public library. The law student first visited Rwanda as part of a team to help develop the nation's criminal justice system in the wake of the genocide there.

Law student launches fundraising
effort for Rwanda’s first public library

During his first trip to Rwanda, Yale Law School student Zachary Kaufman met a woman whose family members — including her children — were killed with machetes before her eyes.

The woman, named Ancilla, was the housekeeper in the home where Kaufman stayed during his visit to the east African country. She was the only one to survive when in 1994 Hutu militia attacked her family, then threw them into a pit. Ancilla’s dying children were flung on top of her. Although her back was badly cut, Ancilla managed to climb out of the pit after a couple of days and fled to some marshes, hiding there until the genocide ended.

Kaufman was a recent Yale College graduate (Class of 2000) when he went to Rwanda in connection with his work for the U.S. Department of Justice, where he was part of a team assigned to help the traumatized country develop its criminal justice system after the genocide. By some estimates, one million Rwandans died as a result of the official campaign by the majority Hutu to exterminate the minority Tutsi.

Having already researched the Rwandan genocide while an undergraduate, he knew that there were thousands of Rwandans who had survival stories like Ancilla’s to share. What he didn’t know before his trip was that many of these survivors, and other Rwandans, were cut off from information about each other and the world due to the fact that there was no public library in their country.

Upon hearing that news, Kaufman says he knew right away what he needed to do. Once he returned to the United States, he would start a non-profit organization to raise funds to support the building of the country’s first public library.

“There is a relationship between the genocide and the lack of a public library,” says Kaufman, noting that it is easier to spread lies and propaganda about a particular group in an environment where there is little access to accurate information. “Here is a country where there had been a recent genocide, and part of the reason that occurred was because the perpetrators deliberately disseminated misinformation intended to provoke mass violence.

“At the time of the genocide, Rwanda was an isolated society,” Kaufman adds. “There wasn’t a lot of information coming from the outside to counter or debunk these myths. It’s amazing to think of any country today that doesn’t have a public library, but I think the consequences have been particularly acute for Rwanda. Helping in the cause to build a public library seemed like an obvious thing to do.”

In 2001, Kaufman started the American Friends of the Kigali Public Library (AFKPL), which in December 2007 completed the first part of its mission: to help the Rotary Club of Kigali-Virunga raise $2 million toward the construction of the library in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital and largest city.

One year after he started that fundraising organization, Kaufman inspired the birth of a second group to help in that same cause. As a Marshall Scholar working toward his master’s degree in international relations at Oxford University, he suggested that he and the other Marshall Scholars in his class studying throughout Great Britain undertake a group public service project. His fellow Marshall Scholar Marisa Van Saanen (now also at Yale Law School) — who knew about Kaufman’s commitment to building a library in Rwanda and shared his interest in helping the country — suggested that the group start another fundraising campaign. The class of students launched Marshall Scholars for the Kigali Public Library (MSKPL), with Kaufman as its executive director. AFKPL and MSKPL, in conjunction with the Rotary Club of Kigali-Virunga, have now raised enough money to make the dream of a public library in Rwanda a reality.

The three organizations state their shared goals on the website for the Kigali Public Library project: to safeguard freedom and aid the development of a healthy society; to make information and ideas freely accessible to all Rwandans; to help develop business skills in the country; to open children’s minds; to promote conscientious action; and to build a common national identity.

“Our hope is that the library will contribute to an enduring peace in Rwanda,” says Kaufman.

A political science major while at Yale College, Kaufman credits his undergraduate experience in student government and his class work with giving him the skills needed to launch his successful fundraising campaign, which has garnered support from local and multinational corporations, libraries and librarians, governments and government officials, private citizens and others. He served as chair of the Freshman Class Council during his first year at Yale, was treasurer of the Yale College Council (YCC) in his sophomore year, and was elected YCC president for his junior year. In these various positions, the Yale student lobbied for change in the dining halls, campaigned on issues ranging from better bathroom tissue to financial aid for international students, and helped raise funds for undergraduate activities.

“To start AFKPL I had to learn how to incorporate a non-profit organization, recruit volunteers, establish a board of directors, raise public awareness and fundraise,” Kaufman says. “My experience in student government directly informed my subsequent work on the library. Many of the challenges I encountered in the process were similar to those I confronted in student government but on a whole new level.”

Kaufman notes the importance of teamwork to the effort to build Rwanda’s first public library. “Many, many people, some of whom are now dear friends, have generously volunteered tremendous amounts of their time, energy and expertise to the Kigali Public Library project. We would never have gotten to where we currently are without all of us working together.”

Kaufman’s involvement with the Kigali Public Library project, and the connections he made through this effort, has since inspired his interest in the issue of social entrepreneurship in general. He is currently editing a book on the topic, he writes and speaks on the subject, and he co-founded and serves as co-president of Yale Law Social Entrepreneurs.

“Yale, with its emphasis on public service, leadership and innovative problem-solving, is a breeding ground for social entrepreneurs,” Kaufman comments.

The law student is also working toward his Ph.D. at Oxford, for which he is writing a dissertation about the role of the United States in the establishment of war crimes tribunals. His own interest in the prevention and cessation of and recovery from genocide and other atrocities has been further developed through his work in recent years for the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Department of State, the U.N. International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and the International Criminal Court. He was the first American to serve at the latter institution, where he was a policy clerk to the first chief prosecutor.

Kaufman is also currently co-editing a book about Rwanda since the genocide, which will be co-published by Columbia University Press and Hurst later this year. Profits from the book will be contributed to the Kigali Public Library, as will a portion of the profits of his book on social entrepreneurship (the rest being dedicated to the other social ventures he profiles in that book).

The law student looks forward to the day when Rwanda will be a country of readers, and he and his colleagues are thus keeping their fundraising drive going through AFKPL for the maintenance of the library, which is expected to open by the end of this year.

“People in Rwanda are really excited about the library,” he says. “We’ve had donors from all age groups, all ethnic groups, all backgrounds. One donor was a little boy who put one Rwandan franc on a desk of the temporary library office and said, ‘This is to help build my library!’”

The comment was particularly poignant to Kaufman, who says he learned in his younger days that children do not naturally hate others or discriminate against them. When he was in elementary school, he was physically assaulted by classmates in his hometown of Morgantown, West Virginia, for being Jewish. One of them went so far as to repeatedly ram Kaufman’s head into a rock while accusing him of killing Jesus Christ. Kaufman later became friends with one of his attackers.

“Hate, especially for young people, is usually learned, not innate,” says the law student. “Ethnic, racial, religious, gender and other group-based violence and discrimination are often bred from misunderstanding or ignorance, or the teachings of authority figures. I think people find that when they personally and genuinely learn about the other person or group, their animosity, hostility or fear is reduced. That is why education is so important and why this library is so important.”

More information about the AFKPL, including how to donate, can be found at www.kigalilibrary.org.

— By Susan Gonzalez

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