Dydine Umunyana Anderson
Dydine Umunyana Anderson was four years old when the genocide against the Tutsi began in Rwanda, and her introduction to humanity was watching it fail. She grew up in a country that had to learn how to live next door to what it had done. Her mother moved the family from house to house with her plants wrapped in cloth on their laps. Her grandmother let her fields rest for a year when the soil was tired. Between those two women, Dydine learned most of what she knows about coming back.
She has since spoken at TEDx Cornell University, Talks at Google, the Harvard Kennedy School, Meta, the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles and the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, and in schools, prisons and community halls across Colombia and North America. “Every room I walk into holds someone who is quietly in their own dry season,” she says. “I want them to know what grows back.”
Dydine is the author of Embracing Survival, a memoir of the childhood she survived and the life she chose afterward, and a contributor to Imagine: Reflections on Peace from The VII Foundation. She founded Umunyana Coffee, named for her family, and Kind Kulture, a Los Angeles nonprofit that gathers strangers and turns them into neighbors. Every Sunday she writes a letter called Dear Humanity, which is becoming her next book.
Also by Dydine
Kind Kulture
A Los Angeles nonprofit Dydine founded to gather strangers and turn them into neighbors, through storytelling nights, youth programs and community gatherings built around listening.
kindkulture.orgUmunyana Coffee
A coffee company named for her family, connecting Rwandan growers to American tables and carrying a piece of the country she came from into ordinary mornings.
umunyana.comFor event programs
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Short · 60 words
Dydine Umunyana Anderson is a motivational speaker, author and founder. She opens dialogue between people about their shared histories and their cultural differences, and through her writing and talks she works to pierce the wall of silence around the hardest parts of being alive. She is the author of Embracing Survival and the founder of Kind Kulture and Umunyana Coffee in Los Angeles.
Medium · 160 words
Dydine Umunyana Anderson is a motivational speaker, author and founder. She opens dialogue between people so they can understand their shared histories and their cultural differences, and through her writing and her talks she works to pierce the wall of silence that still surrounds so much of our lives. She has spoken at TEDx Cornell University, Talks at Google, the Harvard Kennedy School, Meta, the Museum of Tolerance and the Museum of Jewish Heritage, and in schools, prisons and community halls across Colombia and North America. In 2013 she was appointed a youth peace ambassador for the Aegis Trust, and in 2015 a global mentor for peace at Serve2Unite. She is the author of Embracing Survival, a contributor to Imagine: Reflections on Peace from The VII Foundation, and the founder of Kind Kulture, a Los Angeles nonprofit, and Umunyana Coffee. She was four years old in Rwanda in 1994, and everything she makes is about what came after. Every Sunday she writes a letter called Dear Humanity.