Rose Mapendo

Mapendo currently lives in Phoenix, Arizona, and has ten children. They study at the local schools and universities, worship at the local church and work in various fields. The twins born while in the death camp graduated from high school in the spring of 2017. Rose is now a grandmother of six.

2007 - Volvo for Life Award 2008 - CNN Hero 2009 - Winner of the United Nations Humanitarian of the Year Award 2015 - Muhammad Ali Humanitarian of the Year Award for Gender Equality

In July 2000, Mapendo and her children received refugee status and moved to the United States. During this time, Rose did not know if Nangabire had survived. After a long search, Rose received word that her parents and daughter were alive. In 2007, Nangabire received refugee status and was reunited with her family in the US. Though she had suffered greatly, being separated from her family, she overcame all of the challenges of moving to a new country, learning a new language, and finding her way through the educational system and is now a wife and mother in her twenties and working as a caregiver (hoping to be a nurse).

In 1994, there was an outbreak of genocide in Rwanda. On August 2, 1998 the government of the DRC ordered the genocide of the Tutsi people in the Congo. During this time the police visited Rose on multiple occasions questioning her about the location of her husband and their money. She lied, saying that her husband was not home, and had gone to buy cows for his business. In reality, he was at home and in hiding assuming the men were being taken into custody, but they would never take the women and children. She was wrong. They later heard on televised news that the president was willing to kill all Tutsis and keep their belongings and money, but, with nowhere to go, the family hid at home cloaked in darkness with no activity to give the home the appearance that it was abandoned. Rose paid friends and neighbors to make any purchases that she needed. Eventually, however, her family was found. They were carried in a truck to a prison camp on the night of September 23, 1998, along with four other Tutsi families.

Rose Mapendo (born 1963) is a Congolese human rights activist. She founded the Rose Mapendo Foundation with the mission to empower the women of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi to rise above their circumstances and unite to bring peace to their region.

Rose Mapendo was born in Mulenge, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in 1963. She grew up in a humble Tutsi family, who professed the Christian religion. She belongs to the Banyamulenge Tutsi tribe. Raised for marriage and motherhood according to her family's culture, Mapendo never went to school. She married when she was 16, as is common among women of the tribe. Later, in 1994, she moved to the city of Mbuji-Mayi so that her children could go to school and her husband began his career as a butcher.