INDIANAPOLIS – Today, Colts Vice President Kalen Irsay was honored to welcome a special guest to the Indiana Farm Bureau Football Center. Rose Mapendo, The United Nations 2009 Humanitarian of the Year, was in town for a speaking engagement and stopped by the Colts training facility for a tour and visit with Irsay.
Mapendo, who now travels the world as an advocate for peace and reconciliation, was imprisoned with her husband and seven of her eight children in a death camp during a civil war in her homeland, the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, in 1998. Sadly, Mapendo's husband was executed in prison before she and her children were rescued by an American peace-keeping group.
Mapendo has now settled in Arizona and founded Mapendo New Horizons, a non-profit organization whose mission is to give help and hope to vulnerable survivors of physical, psychological, and social trauma in Africa by ensuring them easy access to health care, protection and security.
To learn more about Rose Mapendo's story, visit mapendonewhorizons.org.
