In 1996, a 26-year-old man named Luc Ntahobari fled from his home country of Burundi. For three years, civil war had been raging across the country, pitting ethnic Hutus and Tutsis against each other. Set off by the first multi-party elections since independence, the war lasted 12 years. Children were widely recruited as soldiers, and it is estimated that over 300,000 people died. As Luc describes it: “It was terrible the killing that started. My prayer for myself was that I would be killed so that I would not have to kill someone.” 

On an early spring morning in Kent, Washington, a group of women are gathered around a tall cutting table, watching Sandy Appl demonstrate how to use a rotary cutter. The device, which looks a lot like a tiny pizza cutter, makes cutting strips of fabric as easy as drawing a line.