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Dr. Mireille Twayigira
Also known as Mireille Twayigira
Rwandan-born medical doctor and refugee-education advocate whose schooling in Dzaleka led to a medical scholarship and a career in Malawi.
From Dzaleka to medical school
Mireille Twayigira left Rwanda with her family during the 1994 genocide. Jesuit Refugee Service records that she reached Dzaleka with her grandfather in 2000, at the age of eight, after years of displacement across several countries.
Twayigira attended a JRS-supported primary education programme in Dzaleka and later continued to secondary school. She graduated among Malawi’s highest-performing female secondary students and received support from JRS and the Malawian and Chinese governments to study medicine in China.
She completed her medical degree in 2016 and returned to Malawi. Public profiles published by JRS and Georgetown University in 2018 and 2019 identified her as a medical doctor in Malawi.
Education advocacy
Twayigira became a JRS Refugee Education Advocate, speaking publicly about the role education played in her life and arguing that displaced children should be treated as people with skills and agency rather than only as recipients of assistance.
Her connection to Dzaleka is central to that advocacy: the camp was where sustained access to school became possible after years of interrupted childhood education. Her public work has made her one of the best-documented examples of a former Dzaleka student entering medicine.
References
Sources
- 1Meet Mireille: JRS Refugee Education Advocate
Jesuit Refugee Service, 9 November 2018
- 2Dr. Mireille Twayigira inspires others with her story of hope
Jesuit Refugee Service Europe, 11 February 2019
- 3Mireille Twayigira
Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, Georgetown University, 2019
Related entries
Education
Education in Dzaleka
Public, private, community, and post-secondary education in Dzaleka, including the Malawi curriculum and long-running scholarship and digital-learning programmes.
Institution
Jesuit Refugee Service in Dzaleka
The education, livelihoods, psychosocial, pastoral, and basic-needs programmes operated by Jesuit Refugee Service in and around Dzaleka.
Health
Dzaleka Health Centre
The primary health facility inside Dzaleka, serving refugees, asylum-seekers, and surrounding communities in Dowa District.
Place
Dzaleka Refugee Camp
A long-established refugee settlement in Dowa District, Malawi, opened in 1994 and now home to a large, multilingual community from the Great Lakes region and the Horn of Africa.
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