An American’s love story with the ‘land of a thousand hills’
He has gone to Rwanda 25 times in the most recent decade, 23 of them in the previous five years.
This year alone, he intends to visit Rwanda five more circumstances, having been here once as of now.
He has given a tractor, GPS devices to encourage the utilization of satellite information in farming, paid educational cost for understudies and has upheld Rwanda's presidential grant program since 2007.
He has gone to all Rwanda Day occasions on various landmasses and took part in Genocide celebration exercises abroad and has conveyed huge numbers of his companions to Rwanda, who have given immediate or roundabout help to Rwanda's projects.
His name is Steven Noah, a local of Iowa State, USA.
His story with Rwanda dates as far back as the 1980s, when, at one of the family readings, his little girl read out loud a book by Dian Fossey about mountain gorillas "in the northern piles of an apparently audacious nation called Rwanda."
"My family ended up captivated by the stories of the mountain gorillas," he stated, including that much as he was intrigued, he never understood this was the start of a romantic tale with a nation far from home.
From that point, the family "knew a smidgen of Rwanda thus amid the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, we were unfortunately mindful of the occasions that were occurring."
Noah's initially immediate contact with Rwandans occurred in 2005 when he "fortuitously sat by the then Rwandan represetative to the US, Dr Jack Nsenga, in three back to back gatherings, in three distinct states, in a time of a month and a half."
The efficient incident was because of the way that 'Nsenga' and 'Noah' are in order close, thus the vicinity in the sitting game plan.
"Around then Ambassador Nsenga educated me regarding Rwanda's program for presidential grants for understudies to learn at colleges in the USA."
Noah was not in the position to get required around then yet the next year, in 2006, he turned into the Vice President for Advancement and External Relations at William Penn University which Rwanda happened to investigate for presidential grants.
The grants at Penn didn't work out as expected until the next year under the new Rwandan emissary to the US at the time, James Kimonyo, who Noah likewise had met the very day he exhibited his accreditations in Washington D.C.
Kimonyo was later welcomed to William Penn University in September 2007 for assembly where he likewise met Noah's companion, Ted Townsend, who later gave three million dollars towards the protection of Gishwati Forest.