As a humanitarian aid worker, Carl Wilkens moved his young family to Rwanda in the spring of 1990. When the genocide was launched in April 1994, Carl refused to leave, even when urged to do so by close friends, his church and the United States government. Thousands of expatriates evacuated and the United Nations pulled out most of its troops. Carl was the only American to remain in the country. Venturing out each day into streets crackling with mortars and gunfire, he worked his way through roadblocks of angry, bloodstained soldiers and civilians armed with machetes and assault rifles in order to bring food, water and medicine to groups of orphans trapped around the city. His actions saved the lives of hundreds.

Carl returned to the United States in 1996. After being featured in the 2004 PBS Frontline documentary, Ghosts of Rwanda, about the Rwanda genocide, he began to receive letters, phone calls and offers from teachers around the country to come and share his experiences with students.

In January 2008, with no end in sight to the ongoing genocide in Darfur, Sudan, Carl decided to quit his job and dedicate himself full time to accepting these invitations.  He and his wife Teresa have since formed an educational nonprofit, World Outside My Shoes, to facilitate this important work. 

In 2011 Wilkens released his first book entitled I’m Not Leaving. It is based on tapes he made to his wife and children during the genocide. This June a new 35-minute documentary entitled I’m Not Leaving will come out with the story of his family’s journey through one of the darkest chapters of modern history. Concerning both the book I’m Not Leaving and in the new documentary by the same name Wilkens writes:

For years now, Carl and his wife Teresa have been speaking in schools on nearly every continent about their experiences in Rwanda and sharing the power of stories and service to build bridges to peace with “The Other.”