Josiane Gahimbare is 15 years old, one of the youngest students in the Community For Burundi household. Her name means ‘a small, beautiful thing,’ and she is rather shy. She comes from a family torn apart too soon, as her father was killed by rebel soldiers when she was 8 years old and her only sister left for the city to find work and never returned. Now only Josiane and her mother remain together.

Her mother went to work in other people’s fields in order to earn a small amount of money to keep them alive. Josiane attended primary school, but only could go sporadically. This made integrating with the other students hard and keeping up with her studies even harder, so there was little joy in school. But she does want to learn…

What Josiane is passionate about is mastering the English language. She believes that since so many countries in the world use English and even technology relies heavily on knowledge of the language – the ability to communicate fluently in English will be such a benefit to her. It is necessary for the Batwa people if they want to advance, she says. She wants to teach English to others – the Batwa communities but also Hutus and Tutsis. She believes that everyone should have the opportunity to learn English if they want to.

Someday, Josiane wants to improve the living conditions for her family and friends. She envisions them living in nice homes instead of the grass and mud huts where they live now. She dreams of owning a large piece of land where she can cultivate crops, and of building homes nearby for the workers so that they will have easy access to their work. She wants them to live comfortably while they farm the land, both to feed their families and to take to market for a profit. It is beautiful to see her envisioning management of land that includes the welfare of the workers, wanting everyone to have access to work, food and education. She is living up to her name – small and beautiful.