It was startling at best. Scary, one could argue, and certainly disconcerting. Looking down the barrel of a faux shotgun made of a large tree branch, a man towered over me, screaming, "No press allowed, get back!" He barred me from entering what I was told were the dictator's headquarters. It was actually a college campus building.

I was a "real life" reporter (mistaken as a participant) in the middle of a role-playing exercise between those branded as civil rights activists and those playing government troops. It was surreal and got my adrenalin pumping, as I was stuck in the middle of a crowd of about 50 people. But it was only a simulation exercise at The Summer Peace Building Institute at the School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont.

The program participants have seen such conflicts in real life in their own countries. That's why every summer since 1997, scores of people from areas of conflict come to Vermont to learn non-violent peace-building techniques.

They come from 30 different countries for the three-week summer program, called CONTACT (Conflict Transformation Across Cultures).

In the crowd of participants I met a Rwandan genocide survivor named Christine Uwayezu. The 24-year-old is a quiet woman with a past born of the horrors of war. She was only 11 years old when she witnessed the execution of her father at the hands of a Hutu militia during the mass killings in the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. Her father was one of nearly a million people slaughtered in the ethnic conflict in which Tutsis, along with Hutu political moderates, were killed.

Uwayezu escaped the violence, although most of her family was killed in the conflict. She went on to live in Kenya and received a degree in international studies -- but she did not take this journey of healing alone. A nongovernmental organization called Feminenza helped finance her education and helped pay her tuition and expenses so she could participate in the CONTACT program.

The funds came from Feminenza's project called Give a Girl a Chance. It provides money for mentoring, personal growth, education and rehabilitation for girls victimized by war and gender bias.

Now, 15 years after the genocide in Rwanda, Uwayezu is living in Canada. She says she hopes to take the wisdom she has gained here in the CONTACT program to help other women and children who have been victimized by war. Her dream is to eventually return to her home country of Rwanda, to teach peace building and non-violent communication techniques to women.

Uwayezu's greatest goal, she tells me, is to help women regain their dignity and self-esteem. She knows only too well the amount of healing that needs to take place. It's a journey that she says will likely go on for the rest of her life.

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More information on Judy's story, Peace Institute.