About Damas Gisimba
Damas Gisimba was the director of an orphanage, the Gisimba Memorial Center, in Kigali, Rwanda, when the genocide began in April 1994.
While Tutsi were targeted across Rwanda, he offered them safety, hiding children among the orphans and adults in the ceiling of the orphanage.
Gisimba's center, which had previously housed 60 orphans, became a shelter for some 400 people. Gisimba risked his life repeatedly by refusing to allow militias to enter the center. But when the militias realized how many people were hiding there, Gisimba could no longer prevent a massacre.
Through the intervention of American aid worker Carl Wilkens, who pleaded with the Rwandan prime minister to save the orphanage, Gisimba, the orphans, and all the people he was hiding were evacuated to a safer place in Kigali.
Gisimba remains the director of the orphanage. His greatest struggles today are to maintain the health and education of the orphans, many of whom were orphaned because of AIDS and often are themselves now infected with HIV, and the financial security of the center.