Marguerite Barankitse
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Marguerite "Maggie" Barankitse is a Burundian humanitarian activist who works to improve the welfare of children and challenge ethnic discrimination in Burundi. After rescuing 25 children from a massacre, she was forced to witness the conflicts between the Hutu and Tutsi in her country in 1993. She established Maison Shalom, a shelter that provided access to healthcare, education, and culture to o
"Everyone said, “She is crazy.” I found enough energy and love to share and to ignore or work to change the too many stupid things in the way to what was needed and what was right. But I want to stress that in all these years it was not just Maggie who built. I have friends, like Aline and Catherine, who also became crazy and who have worked with me."
"I said, “Tomorrow, another war will begin, because the people are not together. I’ll build a cinema, and then they can talk together; they can watch movies together."
"When you suffer so much, when you watch your brothers killing your other brothers -- Because I am Christian. When you see a mom dying and you are not able to save her, then you think, “And I am Christian!” I said, “God created us, gave us, with our baptism, with our communion, strength with that."
"I said, “That’s how to give opportunities to dream to those people who suffered so much from the war.” And I put in a swimming pool."
