Jesse Hawkes
Executive Director & Rwanda Program Director

Jesse is a social activist, professional actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and youth development worker. Jesse has served as GYC's Executive Director since 2009, and has also been GYC's Rwanda Program director since 2007, organizing an average of two human rights learning and action youth summits per year in collaboration with local Rwandan partner organizations. After receiving his BA in History from Harvard University in 1999, Jesse continued his performance career based out of NYC and soon began to pursue a life-long dream of learning more about, and connecting his talents to, community development theatre projects in other parts of the world. In 2002, he served as a visiting artist at the Community Arts Project in Cape Town, South Africa where he directed, wrote and facilitated a community development theatre project in the township of Langa in collaboration with South African artists and youth. Jesse also has experience in Haiti, where he explored the use of theatre for the bicentennial celebrations in 2004, on a Puffin Foundation Grant, and he also led a group of high school youth from the US on a visit to Haiti in collaboration with Global Kids and Parents, Teachers, and Students for Social Responsibility. Jesse lived and worked in Kigali, Rwanda for six years, where he co-founded Rwandans Allied for Peace and Progress (RAPP). Jesse’s work at RAPP included developing and managing a creative HIV prevention program for over sixty Rwandan high schools and communities, utilizing a combination of innovative theatre methods, peer education, and outreach activities. With RAPP, he co-wrote a radio mini-series for the Rwandan Ministry of Education, and also directed four short films for PSI/CNLS and the first Rwandan Film Festival. As a consultant, he wrote episodes of Ishuti Solange, a popular radio drama series on HIV/AIDS and other public health concerns, as well as films about HIV Prevention in the Rwandan military and Condom Promotion for Population Services International (PSI-Rwanda). As a founding member, assistant program director and chair of the Board of Directors for Centers for Social Responsibility, Jesse led outreach campaigns to schools for the Rwanda By Invitation program, chaired the Sister Schools program where he led secondary school students on a trip to Rwanda, and designed and delivered presentations on Rwandan history and culture to local high schools in Vermont. Jesse has performed in over forty plays, ranging from Shakespeare to musicals and opera, working with companies such as the National Shakespeare Company, the Williamstown Theatre Festival, the American Repertory Theatre, and the Living Theatre. In collaboration with the Rwandan Ministry of Youth, Culture and Sport and Mashirika Performing Arts, Jesse performed at the 10th memorial service of the 1994 genocide at Amahoro Stadium, Kigali.