Woman who grew up in South Tampa now calls Rwanda home and recently opened a school for women

TAMPA - A school in Rwanda has ties to Tampa, because the woman who founded it, grew up in South Tampa.

The mission of the Akilah Institute for Women is to educate and empower women.

"When you educate a woman, you're educating her whole community," Elizabeth Dearborn Davis said.

Dearborn Davis is an educated woman. She graduated from Berkeley Prep and then Vanderbilt. While in college, she read something that would make a huge impact on her life.

"I just picked up an issue of The Economist, and read an article about what had happened there in 1994," Dearborn Davis said.

In 1994, about a million people were killed within 100 days. The genocide would destroy families.

Dearborn Davis decided she wanted to help one of the poorest countries in Africa, so she moved there after college.

"We have the potential to help these young women literally rebuild a country and rebuild a nation that will impact so many other people," Dearborn Davis said.

In 2008, she had the vision to create a school, and in 2010, The Akilah Institute for Women opened.

"As you know, when you educate a woman, you educate a nation," Noella Abijuru said.

"We can work for our families, we can work for the country and the world as well," Allen Kazarwa said.

Two of the 80 students at the school are Abijuru and Kazarwa. Both lost their father in the genocide. They say the school has given them hope.

"At first I used to be hopeless, because I had so many bad thoughts," Kazarwa said.

Right now classes are held in rented buildings, but plans to build a new school are in the works. Which is why Dearborn Davis, Abijuru, and Kazarwa are on a 14 city tour to raise money for the school and women who want to go there.

"Even small gifts makes a difference and goes directly into that scholarship fund and makes it possible for them to come to Akilah," Dearborn Davis said.

When the women leave Akilah, they will have a diploma in hospitality management. They will also leave knowing that they are helping rebuild a nation.

"One thing that has really inspired me since I joined my school is believe in myself, set up a goal, set up a vision," Abijuru said.

"I came to know the potentials in me, I came to know that I have something more to contribute than I used to," Kazarwa said.

To learn more about the Akilah Institute for Women, go to: akilahinstitute.org/