In October 1993, two days after her Tutsi family were murdered by Hutus inBurundi, Marguerite Barankitse stood in front of a house of Hutus to stop a mob of local Tutsis taking revenge. “Before I am a Tutsi, I am a Christian,” Barankitse remembers telling the mob. “I will not allow you to kill those people.”

The mob took no notice. Calling Barankitse a traitor, they stripped her, tied her to a chair, and burned down the house. “The Hutus were obliged to come out,” she says. “And to punish me, the Tutsis killed 72 people.”

In the aftermath, Barankitse saved 25 orphaned children, hiding them in a German aid worker’s house – and later set up a school specifically for their education. Twenty-three years later, that school – now known as Maison Shalom – has cared for 30,000 children, all of them taught to think beyond ethnic divisions. “It’s not just about helping orphans,” Barankitse says. “It’s about transforming the society of Burundi in a profound way, a holistic way – a mission to break this cycle of violence.”