The peace Corps take a group photo with the US Ambassador Donald Koran and Peace Corps Country Director Steven Miller

The United States Ambassador Donald Koran on Wednesday swore in Twenty-One new Peace Corps volunteers.

The volunteers are a seventh group of volunteers to serve in Rwanda after the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi. The swearing –in ceremony took place at the US Ambassador Residence in Kacyiru.

The volunteers are Community Healthy Volunteers who are going to work in 11 districts in the Eastern Western and Northern Provinces. The volunteers will work in rural health centers where they will be assigned to develop the capacity of rural health outreach workers at the village level.

The U.S Ambassador to Rwanda, Donald Koran, called on the volunteers to be good ambassadors for their country and explained to them about Rwanda.

According to the Peace Corps Country Director Steven Miller, the volunteers will be instrumental in teaching behavior change among the people, maternal and child health and improving the family hygiene and sanitation.

Miller urged the volunteers to invest their energy in creating change among the rural families. “You have a lot of energy, so use it,” he urged them.

He asked them to work with commitment because Rwanda is a committed country which is good to work in, but only when one is committed in what they do.

Peace corps was invited back to Rwanda for the first time since 1994, by President Kagame and the agreement between the governments of Rwanda and USA was signed in August 2008 and the first group of volunteers arrived in Rwanda in January 2009.

Other Peace Corps volunteers in Rwanda work in education with a vast majority working as English teachers assigned to Secondary Schools throughout the country by MINEDUC.

A few more teach Mathematics, Science, and information and Communication Technology. The new volunteers bring the total number of volunteers to 133 working in all the four provinces and the city of Kigali.