The Champion Protectors

The 1994 genocide against the Tutsi was, above all, a betrayal of connection.

It took a country where Hutu, Tutsi and Twa had lived together for centuries — sharing one language, one culture, one faith, intermarrying freely — and, over decades of engineered division, turned neighbours into killers of neighbours.

So it means everything that the two hinges of Freddy Mutanguha's story are both acts of connection — one that saved his life, and one that helped him rebuild it.

Freddy, I'll die with you

When the killing began, Freddy's mother urged him to hide with a childhood friend — a Hutu boy named Jean Pierre.

Understand what that meant.

To shelter a Tutsi in those days was itself a death sentence; anyone caught doing it could be killed alongside the person they hid.

And when his friend, Freddy, unsure of what was next, came to him, this is what he said:

Freddy, I'll die with you

Even a young boy knew the risk. He had made his choice, and for Freddy it is one that would save him.

In the middle of a machine designed to make people betray one another, a child chose the opposite, he chose life.

He chose connection over fear, humanity over hatred, at the possible cost of his own life.

It is one of the purest acts of courage in this entire story — and it is the simple, staggering reason Freddy survived to become who he is.

We saw the power of friendship in the story of James Oglethorpe: proximity became the fuel of his humanity.

Jean Pierre shows the same truth in its most immediate form.

Everything that came afterward — every life Freddy would go on to touch across Rwanda and far beyond — traces back to one friend who would not let the hatred tell him who his brother was.

Healing is something we do together

Connection did not only save Freddy's life. It also gave him his way back into it.

When the killing stopped, he was adrift — his village destroyed, his family gone, his world shattered.

The step that began his healing was almost ordinary: he went back to school.

It was there, among others who had also survived, that he discovered the truth that would shape the rest of his life. Pain shared begins to lift. The power of connection.

In the simple act of telling their stories to one another, Freddy and his fellow survivors found a kind of collective therapy — a space of comfort and mutual support for a whole generation carrying the same wound.

Out of that, Freddy helped found the Association of Student Survivors of the Genocide, a grassroots movement that grew and grew on nothing more complicated, or more powerful, than human beings choosing to heal together.

This is the second great principle of the Champions Pathway, and Freddy lived it long before either of us had a name for it: that when we share our common humanity — when we truly listen, and build honest, human bonds, bonds that mean something — we do not only heal ourselves.

We are also calling our humanity forward, collectively.

We strengthen the humanity in everyone around us, and empower one another to go on and make a difference.

Your story can be a bridge: you can be a Champions Protector

There is a lesson here that reaches well beyond Rwanda, into every workplace, every family, every community.

Division is almost always engineered. It thrives on distance, on caricature, on the neighbour you have stopped truly seeing.

The antidote is the same force that worked in Freddy’s life — not argument alone, but connection: drawing close, telling the truth of our own experience, and letting another human being’s story become real to us.

Or as James Oglethorpe demonstrated: through proximity.

So Freddy's life leaves us with a challenge worth carrying into our own:

Your story can be a bridge rather than a barrier.

The honest sharing of your own experience may unlock healing you will never fully see, in people you may never fully know. And the deepest repair — of a relationship, a team, a divided community — rarely happens alone. It happens together.

Jean Pierre chose to stand beside his friend when it was most dangerous to do so.

He was a Champions Protector. Freddy did not have the power to protect himself: his friend did.

Most of us will never face a choice as dangerous as Jean Pierre’s. But the principle still reaches us: we can stand beside those who cannot protect themselves. We can all be a protector.

And here is the deal: humanity pays forward. It creates a powerful ripple effect.

Jean Pierre’s action as a protector enabled Freddy not only to survive, but to become a protector for others — including people not yet born. He has spent the decades since standing beside others in their pain, inspiring others to do the same.

The same is true of James Oglethorpe. A hot-headed young man of privilege became “the friend” — the kind of friend anyone would want in their corner: a Champions Protector.

Between them, they show us what human connection really is: not a soft comfort, but the single strongest force there is for holding a broken world together: protecting friendship, and most of all, having the capacity to act for the good of others.

As the founding charter of Georgia stated: Not for self, for others. That's the motto of a protector, a true friend.

Become a Champion

Freddy's story shows that our humanity is a fragile thing, and it can easily destroyed. But, it is also the most powerful force we have.

When people choose empathy over fear, connection over division, and forgiveness over the cycle of hate, whole nations can be rebuilt.

If this story stirs something in you, don't let it stay a feeling.

Do what Freddy did — turn it into a choice, a connection, and then create the future you want to see; become that future.

• Join the 35Champions site as a free member, and follow the movement as it grows.
• Pay it forward as a paid member, helping young people join the Champions program and become Humanity Champions in their own communities.
• Most of all, choose a pathway of humanity — and make the courageous, human choices, one at a time, that ripple outward to those around you.

Join as a member, read and share Stories of Humanity, and help fund the next generation of young Champions.

I'd love to hear your reflections below.

Glen