User:Jeanne Celestine Lakin

Jeanne Celestine Lakin, (Born July 7, 1985), is a Rwandan-American Author, Public Speaker, Orphan Advocate, and Philanthropist. Her memoir, A Voice in the Darkness: Memoir of a Rwandan Genocide Survivor, is her personal survival story during the Rwandan Genocide. At the age of ten, Jeanne was orphaned by the genocide against the Tutsis, which claimed most of her family members. She survived the 100 days of slaughter by hiding from violent militiamen all the while caring for her three-year-old twin sisters. Nearly four years later, at age fourteen, she immigrated to the United States and learned English, eventually earning a master's degree from Eastern Washington University. She now works as an adoption counselor, and she and her husband Paul operate their nonprofit charity for orphans called Jeanne’s Promise, a namesake that alludes to Jeanne’s time as an orphan. Although Jeanne’s parents and relatives were killed because of ethnic divisiveness and hatred she speaks publicly about reconciliation and the idea of the “human family.”