About Us
Our History
Amani Africa is a grassroots organization striving to establish sustainable peace in Central African post-conflict communities by engaging youth leaders in cross-cultural dialogue and providing opportunities to orphans and street children through education and training.
The seeds of Amani Africa were planted when Charles Nkazamyambi established the first soccer team for street children in Kigali, Rwanda, in 2001. Charles had recently returned to Africa after spending thirteen years abroad as a professional track runner. He had received the call notifying him of his parents' death shortly before competing in the Track and Field World Championships in Vancouver. He realized that he needed to return to Africa to work with other children who had lost their families.
As an athlete, Charles had seen firsthand the transformative power of sports to bring together young children from different cultures, communities, and backgrounds. Charles realized that many of these children living on the streets had no other support or guidance in their lives. They desperately wanted to belong to a community and to participate in activities where they could interact with other children and positive role models. Charles formed the Sports and Culture for Peace Foundation in order to reach out to these children.
Charles met Gasana Mutesi at a Kigali conference about helping the large number of genocide orphans in the region. After losing her parents in the Rwandan genocide as a teenager, Gasana became very involved in human rights activism in the region, serving on the National Youth Council and other regional and international initiatives. She immediately offered to help Charles with SCPF's activities. Shortly after the first soccer team was established, hundreds children began to arrive at the sports fields every day, requesting to participate in the activities. While Charles couldn't coach all of these children alone, he quickly found Rwandan teenagers and young adults who came out to the fields on the weekends to help as volunteers.
What began as an informal soccer team in the Kigali slum of Nyamirambo rapidly grew into an organization with over 20 teams. After the soccer games were over, Charles and the coaches would lead games related to HIV/AIDS education and engage the children in discussions about human rights and conflict resolution.
A group of young girls living on the streets approached Gasana and asked for her help in forming a traditional dance club. Gasana recognized the potential in reaching out to girls through their participation in dancing and singing clubs. These groups also teach girls about Rwanda's beautiful history of dance and music. Female university students offered to coach and mentor the girls groups.
In 2003, UNICEF and the international organization Right to Play approached Charles with plans to help implement his activities and training modules of sports and development across the country. Charles was then asked to serve as a Right to Play Athlete Ambassador. Government officials and civil society leaders from Burundi witnessed the profound impact that the sports activities were having on children in Kigali communities and asked Charles to bring his programs back to Burundi as well. Years after his parents were killed in the small village of Bugabira, Burundi, Charles returned to his home village to establish a soccer team for street children.
In 2003, Charles and Gasana decided that they had to do something to address the problem of homelessness among these young children. With their very limited savings, they rented a small home in the slum of Nyamirambo in Kigali. They purchased bunk beds and bedding and 17 young boys who were previously living on the streets moved in. Gasana begin approaching her friends in the government and private sector and collected donations to pay for these boys' school fees. Today, Amani Africa pays for over 250 children to attend school.
Elizabeth Davis first began working with Charles and Gasana in May of 2006 after participating in a human rights delegation to Rwanda. In 2007, Charles, Gasana, and Elizabeth established Amani Africa to continue and expand upon the work begun by the Sports and Culture for Peace Foundation. They registered the organization as a 501c3 in the States in order to have the legal and financial structure for fundraising. It was also registered as a nonprofit organization in Burundi.
All of the Amani programs are focused on engaging young children and teenagers in the peace-building process in the Great Lakes region of Africa (Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo).
Since 2002, Charles Nkazamyambi and Gasana Mutesi have received funding from UNICEF, the Steamboat Foundation, Right to Play, and the Holton Foundation to operate sports and human rights programs in Rwanda and Burundi.