Hyppolite Ntigurirwa survived the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. When he was seven years old Hyppolite, lost many members of his extended family and witnessed the murder of his beloved father. He struggled after the genocide to gain an education and to learn to forgive the killers.
By the age of thirty he had graduated from university in Rwanda and worked as a journalist and radio presenter, a playwright and a theatre director.He raised enough money to travel to England and achieved a Masters Degree in Sociology from Bristol University.He started a foundation for peace in Rwanda, and travelled to America to deliver a series of lectures at universities using theatre to address issues of hatred and racism being transmitted from one generation to the next.
In 2019, Hyppolite became an international news item when he performed a hundred-day walk across 1,500 kilometres of Rwanda to mark the 25th anniversary of the genocide, inviting people to join him and to share their stories of peace and forgiveness.