News
CNN and Global Health Frontline News
Village Health Works was recently profiled on CNN and Global Health Frontline News by Gary Striker. Footage courtesy of Melinda Binks and GHFN.
View the video below or click here to visit the Frontline News website to read the full story.
Community Events Spotlight HIV/AIDS Education
VHW brings communities together through sports tournament for public health education
Kigutu, Burundi –Village Health Works, an American non-profit organization based in rural, Burundi, has organized a World AIDS Day tournament. Given countrywide antiretroviral drug shortages and climbing infection rates, Village Health Works is dedicated to leveraging its community-based model to disseminate preventative health messages.
Women’s Refugee Commission 2010 Voices of Courage Award
Deo Niyizonkiza Guest Column
Deo Niyizonkiza was one of two refugees honored at the Women’s Refugee Commission 2010 Voices of Courage Awards held Thursday, May 6 in New York City. In the post below, Deo tell us about his organization Village Health Works and why it is important to provide health care to refugee women and children.
Where There is Health, There is Hope
Kalamazoo College
In May 2011, we brought to campus Deogratias Niyizonkiza and Dziwe Ntaba, co-founders and leadership partners of Village Health Works, a community-based health clinic in Kigutu, Burundi that practices and promotes socially just medicine and public health work. Deogratias was already well known in the Kalamazoo community, as he was the subject of the Kalamazoo Public Library's 2011 Reading Together book, The Strength in What Remains, by Tracy Kidder. Hundreds of people throughout the community awaited their arrival because of this, and they were not disappointed!
Burundian clinic founder brings story of help, hope to UD
Sept. 24, 2010----Deogratias Niyizonkiza's incredible odyssey began when he boarded a plane in Bujumbura, Burundi, in 1994, leaving behind a country being ripped apart by genocide and civil war. On the latest leg of this personal journey, Deo, as he is called, visited the University of Delaware on Wednesday, Sept. 22, to share his vision of hope and renewal. His visit was sponsored by UD's First Year Experience program.
VHW Brings on New Executive Director
New York, NY – Village Health Works, the NGO founded by Deo Niyizonkiza, subject of Tracy Kidder’s bestseller Strength in What Remains, has hired long-time advisor and former campaign operative David Cohen as Executive Director. Cohen has worked with VHW informally since 2008.
From Poverty To The Ivy League: A Refugee's Story
NPR's All Things Considered
Deogratias "Deo" Niyizonkiza, a refugee from the war-torn African country of Burundi, left his homeland in 1993 with little beyond the clothes on his back. When he arrived in New York City, he didn't know a soul there, nor did he speak English. But a series of charitable deeds by complete strangers helped Niyizonkiza transform himself from a homeless immigrant to an Ivy League student — and eventually set up a health clinic back home to help those he left behind.
Alumni Spotlight: Deogratias Niyizonkiza '01
Owl Magazine
“Hell in paradise” is Deo Niyizonkiza’s description of his home country of Burundi, which was named the world’s poorest country by the World Bank in 2006. A place of striking natural beauty, Burundi has endured colonization, decades of misrule by dictators, and, most recently, a 13-year civil war...
Deo to Packed House: ‘You Can Change the World One Person at a Time’
Arcadia University Bulletin
Stiteler Auditorium was packed as Deogratias “Deo” Niyizonkiza, founder of Village Health Works in Burundi, talked about his journey to bring health care to impoverished communities, a world journey that included surviving a massacre at a Burundian hospital and arriving penniless in New York.
Read the full article here.Business Models in Global Health: Village Health Works
Global Health at MIT
This is part of a Series from the MIT Sloan School of Management’s Global Health Delivery Course taught by Dr. Anjali Sastry. In late 2010, a small team of MIT students took a look at the organization from the outside and, as a course assignment, prepared an executive summary aimed at its board of directors. This article presents their overview and assessment of the organization, and their thoughts on challenges and opportunities.
Book Review: 'Strength in What Remains' by Tracy Kidder
Washington Post
In the summer of 2005, a villager walked into a district hospital in Rwanda complaining of abdominal pain. The cause was not difficult to diagnose: an acutely enlarged spleen resulting from untreated malaria. But the American doctors were unable to identify a series of angry rings, scored deep into the skin, that covered the patient's distended belly.
Against the Odds
The New York Times
By RON SUSKIND
That 63-year-old Tracy Kidder may have just written his finest work — indeed, one of the truly stunning books I’ve read this year — is proof that the secret to memorable nonfiction is so often the writer’s readiness to be surprised.
