Clear International

Meet Albert Gasake

Posted by Andrew MacKay on 09 04 2010

Meet Albert Gasake, Prison Project Manager.

 

 

26 year old Albert is the newest recruit to the growing Lawyers of Hope (LOH) team, our CLEAR partners in Rwanda.  Albert has just been appointed as the Prison Project Manager. 

 

This small project is running to the end of 2010 to provide legal advice and assistance to prisoners in Kigali Central and Remera prisons.  LOH and Albert hope that this will be the beginning of a longer term project providing legal assistance and ultimately representation for prisoners.

 

Albert is a graduate of the National University of Rwanda and came to work with LOH because he wants to be an agent of change, especially in relation to vulnerable groups.  Albert has worked with various voluntary organisations since his secondary school where he helped to set up ARG (Association des Elèves Rescapés du Genocide), an association working with student genocide survivors which created artificial families with elected parents from the student body. 

 

Albert was the father to 25 students, responsible for ensuring that his “children” studied well and raising money to meet their needs.  At university Albert founded DUHANARANIRE-KUBAHO (Fight for Survival), with which he is still actively engaged, empowering young survivors to gain knowledge and skills to look after themselves and aiding them to face the loneliness, poverty and trauma of genocide.

   

Albert believes that horrific events can be an engine for change – on a personal and national level.  When we asked him what he hoped for through working with LOH he said “I think a day spent without doing anything kind is a wasted day and I’m looking forward to the day when a prisoner calls me to tell me that he has been released because of our intervention.