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Rwanda
 This year we will be donating a portion of our profits to support African children in the refugee camps and orphanages in Rwanda and Uganda. There are over 40,000 refugees in the Rwanda camps and thousands in the orphanages in Uganda. The children in these camps are from families that were wiped-out in the recent genocides in the Congo and the Sudan. The numbers are staggering! In Rwanda over 800,000 people were killed in 100 days between 1994-1995; in the Congo over 3,000,000 people have been killed since 1996; and more recently over 300,000 people have been killed in Darfur since 2003 and the violence continues.
Last January, the Rizzo family visited the Nyabiheke refugee camp in Rwanda to visit Jonathan's
brother Nick, who had been working there for 6 months as part of the American Refugee Committee
establishing an HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention program. It was an eye-opening, life-changing
experience in many ways but perhaps nothing was more astonishing than this; many of these people
had seen their families killed in front of them, they had been forced to travel  hundreds of
miles from their homes, they were living in absolute poverty with minimal health care and food,
there is no formal or semi-formal education for most of them, but every one of them was
hopeful, they smiled when you talked to them, and they believed that things would get
better. With your support we would like to help.
There are many opportunities but the area that has the highest potential impact is education. Arming the children with knowledge and the adults with skills they can use to support themselves, may be the only way to stop this vicious cycle. It costs $65 per year to send a child to school and none of the thousands of refugees are able to afford it. As Jonathan wrote in his college essay, "I believe that I can and that I will change the world." Indeed, through his foundation, he certainly is.
To learn more about the plight of the African people and Nick's experience in Rwanda and Uganda, click on the links below.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/08/27/kingston_man_takes_on_challenging_year_off/
http://www.nick-rizzo.blogspot.com/
http://www.arcrelief.org/site/PageServer
http://www.theypouredfire.com/
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