When Julie Marner went to Burundi for the first time, she knew she was going to one of the world’s poorest places, and she knew she wanted to help the people who were struggling to survive there.
What she didn’t know then was how much the people of this small East African country were going to help her. And for how long.
“Burundi has challenged me to live every part of my being. My spiritual part. My community part. My friendship part. My intellectual self. It pushes you to be the best you can be,” Marner said from her home in San Carlos.
“I am committed to these folks across the world from me. Some of my best friends live in Burundi. Who would have guessed?”
Marner was introduced to Burundi in 2010 by Burundi Friends International founder Jeanine Niyonzima-Aroian. Marner was so moved by Niyonzima-Aroian and the people of her homeland that she returned a year later to teach English at Light University.
Multiple trips followed, and in 2016, Marner became the executive director of the San Diego-based Burundi Friends International, a nonprofit dedicated to educating and empowering the country’s youth, women and men.
“When I went with Jeanine, I just loved it. I had read that it is one of the world’s poorest countries, but I didn’t expect it to look like Hawaii. I didn’t expect that the hospitality would be at the level it was. I have never been greeted so warmly,” Marner said.
“I don’t look like the people and I don’t speak the language, but there is this connection that is easy and friendly. It compels you to want to learn more about how that is possible.”
In her years with Burundi Friends International — first as a volunteer, then as executive director — Marner has helped foster the growth of some of the organization’s most pivotal projects.
Its English Clubs are bringing language tools and education to more than 50,000 students in 18 provinces. The Project Library program has donated more than 130,000 books to Burundians, and it has helped convert the steel shipping containers into libraries and tech centers.
The music-loving Marner created the group’s Suzuki Violin Program, which started with one student taking virtual violin lessons from Marner’s friend Susanna Han and now has 13 violinists, along with a cellist, a flautist and a keyboard player.
And earlier this year, Burundi Friends International earned a $100,000 grant from the Patrick McGovern Foundation for the equipment and training needed to establish information technology hubs at Burundi high schools.
“Our goal is to get recognition for Burundi,” Marner said. “There are over 12 million people there who most people don’t know exist. They are brilliant. They are awesome. They just need the materials that they are missing.”
Burundi is a world away from the small town in Iowa where Marner grew up, but giving back is in her blood. Raised by a Catholic mother and a Mennonite father in a community with a large Amish population, Marner began volunteering before she even knew there was a word for it. Helping your neighbors wasn’t something you thought much about, it was just something you did.
That spirit stuck with her when she studied music education at St. Ambrose University and psychology at the University of Colorado, and when she moved to San Diego to get her master’s in practical theology from the University of San Diego.
Marner has been a music director at multiple churches, worked in halfway houses and with inmates at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility. She is currently the music director at the Newman Center Catholic Community at UC San Diego and at the Good Samaritan Episcopal Church in La Jolla. She is a Rotarian with San Diego Rotary Club #33.
But one of the ongoing highlights of her life are the times when she is being driven around Burundi in a Jeep as she checks in on the many Burundi Friends’ projects that are flourishing around the country. These trips remind Marner of her second trip to Burundi. Officially, she was there to teach English. Emotionally, she was hoping to also work through the grief that came after the death of an important person in her life.
In the poorest country in Africa, Marner found a wealth of friendship, and purpose. She will never get tired of returning the favor.
“I never thought the most painful experience in my life would lead to a leap of faith and to continuing to show up to see the next thing I could do,” Marner said.
“It changed my life. If I can connect with Burundians in this tiny country most people have no knowledge of, and they can connect with me, there are things in this world that we can really fix. They give me hope for humanity.”
For more information about Burundi Friends International, go to bufri.org
