AMESBURY, Mass. (AP) - Underdog Skate Shop owner Wade Cedar was talking to his Rwandan friend Parfait Gasana one day in the fall of 2013 when both of their lives changed.
“(Gasana) said, ’I think I want to start a library in my home country one day, just to bring some literacy there,’” Cedar said. “And I was like, ’You know what, I’m totally down for that.’”
Three years later, Gasana’s simple idea has become a reality in the small Kigali neighborhood of Nyamirambo, where roughly 200 children a week have been learning to read at a pair of Kigali Reading Centers.
“There are a lot of kids who are walking an hour just to get there and read our books,” Cedar said. “But they do it.”
A Newburyport native, Cedar, 27, grew up homeless but went on to become the first member of his family to graduate high school. He then received his bachelor’s degree in sociology (with a 4.0 GPA) from UMass-Boston, where he also earned a master’s degree in international relations in 2014.
“We moved about 25 times,” Cedar said of growing up. “We lived in basements and in my mom’s car at one point.”
It was while earning his master’s that Cedar met Gasana, who had a similar - but more harrowing - life story.
“He moved around a whole bunch in his childhood because he was born in a refugee camp during (the 1994) genocide,” Cedar said. “He has family all across the globe because of the atrocities that happened there.”
A pair of young men trying to make the world a better place, both Cedar and Gasana decided to give Gasana’s dream a try. They spent the early part of 2014 raising roughly $7,000 through an Indiegogo web page and collecting 6,000 children’s books from various libraries, book stores, friends and family.
With the aid of Gasana’s sister Grace, who functioned as their Rwandan manager, and a $4,000 grant from UMass, both Cedar and Gasana made the trip to Rwanda just as their books were shipped ahead of them in the summer of 2014.
Seeing the predominantly Muslim neighborhood of Nyamirambo as a place with the biggest need for their services, Cedar and the Gasanas built a three-room school in what Cedar called “a stone trailer.”
“If you can imagine a trailer made of stone, painted yellow with orange windowsills,” Cedar said, “that would be it.”
Opening day in Nyamirambo saw eight children between the ages of 4 and 10 step into the Kigali Reading Center.
“They were a little shy,” Cedar said. “But once they saw what we were doing, they blossomed right before our eyes. And it only took about an hour, not even.”
With a staff of four overseeing a lending library and leading the children in story time periods and one-on-one reading lessons, the number of visitors at the Kigali Reading Center would grow to roughly 20 each day by the end of that summer.
“We were just flying by the skin of our teeth,” Cedar said. “We wanted to show the kids we had a place that they could come to after school, if they were going to school, and spend some time- that this is an acceptable place for that.”
Although Cedar had to leave Nyamirambo at the end of the summer of 2014, the Kigali Reading Center has grown to host 200 students a week in two locations in the past 21/2 years. There is now talk of getting a bookmobile up and running as well.
“We are trying to make it mobile,” Cedar said. “Just seeing all the kids that were already there and the people that were staying behind with them. We met a lot of people in Kigali who are willing to help and spread the word, so I feel pretty good.”
When Cedar returned to the U.S., he opened Underdog on Friend Street in the fall of 2015. There, he employs a similar approach when it comes to the young customers who come into his store as he did while teaching kids to read in Nyamirambo.
“I try to provide the same atmosphere and attitude that went into the Kigali Reading Center,” Cedar said. “It is all about being inclusive and accepting everyone. I am trying to help these kids grow as humans and not just skaters.”
Hoping to spread their message, both Cedar and Gasana will be giving updates on the Kigali Reading Center’s progress and hosting a silent auction at Crave restaurant in downtown Amesbury on Monday, Jan. 9, at 6 p.m. Tickets are $20 and hors d’oeuvres will be served.
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Information from: The Daily News of Newburyport (Mass.), https://www.newburyportnews.com
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