Last Man Standing: The American Who Stayed During the Rwandan Genocide - An Interview with Carl Wilkens

Carl Wilkens is a peace activist and an educator who headed up the Adventist Development and Relief Agency International in Rwanda (ADRA). He was the only American who chose to remain in Kigali, Rwanda during the genocide of 1994. His choice to remain in the country during that time of brutal atrocities resulted in the prevention of the murder of hundreds of children. Wilkens was featured in Frontline’s “Ghosts of Rwanda” and in “The Few Who Stayed: Defying Genocide,” an American Radio Works documentary broadcast on National Public Radio. He has received several humanitarian awards, including awards from Saint John’s School of Theology Seminary and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre. He is a Seventh-Day Adventist pastor who devotes much of his time to promoting activism for peace. Wilkens and his wife, Teresa, founded World Outside My Shoes (see http://worldoutsidemyshoes.org), a nonprofit educational and professional organization committed to inspiring and equipping people to enter the world of “the other,” which Wilkens indicates may be under our own roof or on the other side of the globe. The Wilkenses also started Pedaling for Peace (pedaling2Peace.org) and travel around the United States sharing their stories of hope. Jerri Shepard, Associate Professor in the School of Education at Gonzaga University, spoke with Wilkens on June 8, 2010.