And those SPI alumni who aren’t aiming to earn a degree? Some of them just keep coming back year after year – almost as an educational vacation – or they send their colleagues and friends to SPI.

Of the 2,800 SPI participants over the last 19 years, more than one in five have been repeat participants, taking courses during a second year or even multiple years of SPI. In that number must be counted almost all of CJP’s 398 master’s degree alumni, plus 91 graduate certificate holders. Some of their MA classmates are now SPI instructors, plus many of their professors have taught at SPI year after year.

Detouring six hours to reconnect

Among the first drop-bys to SPI 2014 were Florina Benoit and Ashok Gladston of India, both 2004 MA grads from CJP and now PhD-holders. They made a six-hour round-trip detour from a family-related stop in Baltimore, Maryland, to say “hello” to folks at SPI.

Gladston was last at 91����Ƶ in June 2011 when he gave a heart-wrenching talk at 91����Ƶ centering on women from a minority group in southern India who were being violently victimized by mobs from the surrounding majority group.

The two, both former Fulbright Scholars married to each other, happened to arrive on May 7 when Doreen Ruto of Kenya, a 2006 MA graduate, was the featured SPI “Frontier Luncheon” speaker, along with her colleague (and son) Richy Bikko, a 2011 BA graduate who majored in justice, peace and conflict studies.

Over that day, Gladston and Benoit interacted with a dozen professors, staffers and alumni whom they recalled from their studies at CJP 10 years ago.

When the day turned to evening and their borrowed car was found to have a non-working headlight, they lingered for activities very familiar to them – a community “potluck” meal, followed by a cultural program led by SPI participants, and informal dancing. (They huddled with this writer for much of that time answering questions about their work in India – but more on that later.)

They then accepted the impromptu invitation of Margaret Foth, a retiree who has been a long-time liaison with CJP alumni, and slept in a guest room at the Foths’ home, adjacent to 91����Ƶ.

 “It was like we recalled from our time as graduate students,” says Benoit. “We felt like we were visiting our second home.”

In 2013, Gladstone and Benoit had been scheduled to teach an SPI course on the logistics of humanitarian aid – more specifically, on how such aid intersects with peacebuilding practices, including the “do no harm” principle – but, unfortunately, that year the number of people seeking such training was insufficient to hold the course.

Always more to learn

A third former Fulbright Scholar, Shoqi Abas Al-Maktary, MA ’07, took a break from his job as country director in Yemen for Search for Common Ground and spent May 15-23 taking the SPI course “Designing Peacebuilding Programs – From Conflict Assessment to Planning. ”

“I don’t think anyone in this field can afford to stop being a student,” says Al-Maktary, who holds a second master’s degree in security management from Middlesex University in the United Kingdom. “There is always more to know, more to explore with others in the field. And SPI – with its intensive courses – is a great place to do this.”

Thomas DeWolf of the United States just finished attending his fourth SPI in six years, with the course “Media for Societal Transformation.” He first came in 2008 where he explored Coming to the Table (explained in next paragraph). He returned for a restorative justice course in 2009, and then in 2012, received a scholarship to take “Healing the Wounds of History: Peacebuilding through Transformative Theater.”

DeWolf’s connection to SPI began with CJP’s sponsorship of Coming to the Table, an organization focused on addressing the enduring impact of the slavery era in the United States. DeWolf has played a leading role in this organization, which held its annual conference at 91����Ƶ this year, over a weekend between two sessions of SPI.

Seven times at SPI

A 76-year-old clinical psychologist from Argentina, Lilian Burlando, has an astonishing record of attendance at SPI, having attended about a third of all the years SPI has been held. From her home at the southern-most tip of South America, Tierra del Fuego, Burlando has attended SPI seven times: in 2006, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014. Often with her, also taking classes, have been members of her family of five children and 19 grandchildren. One of her daughters, Maria Karina Echazu, for instance, is a prosecuting attorney in Argentina who took a restorative justice course in 2007 and a practice course in 2011.

Burlando calls SPI “a refreshing experience,” citing interesting course topics, excellent professors and the sense of community. “To me,” she says, “SPI has been a fountain of intellectual and spiritual enrichment.”

Almost all the teachers at SPI – even those like Johonna McCants, who holds a PhD from the University of Maryland – have also been students at SPI at some point. McCants explains how she found her way to SPI:

In 2009, while finishing my doctoral dissertation, I began searching online for practical training in the issues I was writing about. I discovered CJP and SPI and quickly fell in love. I was attracted by the integration of theory and practice, the variety of courses, the diversity of participants, backgrounds of the instructors, and that the program was housed at a Christian university. I participated in Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) at SPI just a few weeks after receiving my PhD. The STAR experience, which was phenomenal, kept me coming back for more.

McCants brought along a first-timer to SPI 2014, Julian Turner. These two, who first met as teenagers, would be married in a month. But first Turner, who works at an infectious disease clinic in Washington D.C., soaked up the wisdom of Hizkias Assefa in “Forgiveness and Reconciliation,” while McCants co-taught with Carl Stauffer “Restorative Justice: The Promise, the Challenge.”

Loves the diverse people

From her base as a high school teacher in a public school in Washington D.C. – and with experience as an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland – McCants says she is struck by the egalitarian learning community formed by SPI, where the instructors and participants respect and learn from each other.

Her favorite part about SPI?

Definitely, the people! I enjoy learning from people from different parts of the United States and countries all over the world, hearing their stories and developing new relationships. I also like reuniting and reconnecting with people I’ve met during previous times at SPI.

Discovering SPI on the internet, as McCants did, is not typical. More often, SPI participants are encouraged to attend by previous participants.

Libby Hoffman, president and founder of the Catalyst for Peace foundation, for example, attended SPI in 1996 and took another CJP course in 2000. This year she dispatched two rising leaders of Fambul Tok – an organization doing amazing work of promoting post-war reconciliation throughout Sierra Leone – to take two successive courses at SPI. Micheala Ashwood and Emmanuel Mansaray both took “Leading Healthy Organizations,” in addition to “Analysis – Understanding Conflict” and “Psychosocial Trauma,”
respectively.

Ten CJP master’s degree alumni had teaching roles at SPI 2014: Dr. Sam Gbaydee Doe, MA ’98; Dr. Barb Toews,   MA ’00; Dr. Carl Stauffer, MA ’02; Elaine Zook Barge, MA ’03; Roxy Allen Kioko, MA ’07 (PhD candidate); Paulette Moore, MA ’09 (PhD candidate); Jacqueline Roebuck Sakho, MA ’09 (PhD candidate); Caroline Borden, MA ’12; Soula Pefkaros, MA ’10 (PhD candidate); and Danielle Taylor, MA ’13. < — Bonnie Price Lofton

SPI learners – representing 43 nations over six weeks of sessions, May 6-June 14 – did line and contra dancing, joined an exuberant Syrian circle dance, clapped hands to a spirited maranga, watched a graceful performance by colorfully garbed South Pacific colleagues, and eased into a Virginia Reel.

“It’s a nourishment for my soul,” Lilian Burlando said of her near-annual trip to SPI, on the Harrisonburg, Va. campus, from Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. Burlando, who operates a counseling and interfaith dialogue center, said she felt uplifted by the course “Narrative, Theory and Practice,” which highlighted “the importance of stories in everyday life.”

By listening attentively to each other’s narratives, students “learn to be the experts” and not leave understanding to professionals, explained therapist Vanessa Jackson of Atlanta, who taught the narrative course with David Anderson Hooker.

Burlando smiled as she watched granddaughter Mercedes Echazu dance. Echazu – a recent social-work graduate and one of five grandchildren, plus a daughter, who have accompanied Burlando to various SPI sessions – completed “Monitoring and Evaluation,” a course relevant to her profession.

In Nigeria, after 15 years’ employment at a bank, Helen Kwuelum decided to work in peacebuilding and women’s empowerment. She attended SPI’s four sessions, joining husband Charles, who has completed a year’s study in the master’s program.

Near their home in northern Nigeria, the couple had fled bombings by the militant Islamist Boko Haram movement. “So many people were killed, displaced, traumatized,” said Charles. Recent news, in turn, reports thousands of families fleeing the region following a government crackdown on Boko Haram, which recruits unemployed youth to fight.

Charles and a colleague hope to befriend young Nigerian Muslims through their organization, Transforming Systems Initiatives. Helen regrets that during the bombings, “I thought all Muslims taught violence.” Discovering “faith in peacebuilding” at SPI, she no longer attributes violence to any faith. Conflict, she said she now understands, “is all about ourselves, not about the religions.”

Clarinda Molia of the Solomon Islands sang “From a Distance” at the dance. When that ballad of peace became popular during the first Persian Gulf War, Molia was just a baby.

Ana-Latu Dickson of Papua New Guinea studied restorative justice at SPI. Although her nation’s courts employ the concept, Dickson – who helps rehabilitate perpetrators of violence against women – said, “I’m learning more about it here.” She and Molia were among 16 South Pacific and five East African participants in the Women’s Peacebuilding Leadership Program.

This year’s overseas SPI applicants encountered “visa problems – as usual,” co-director reported. Approval of applications from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran “took so long for ‘administrative processing’ that almost no one got a visa in time to come.”

In addition to the narratives course, new offerings were “Designing Peacebuilding Programs,” taught by Lisa Schirch, and “Nurturing Resilience,” by Bill Lowrey and Ali Petersen.

Bruce Stambaugh, a retired educator and weekly columnist for The Holmes Bargain Hunter in a heavily Amish region of Ohio, was one of only three North Americans of 16 participants in his class. On his blog, he wrote: “The others came from places like Azerbaijan, Thailand, Iraq, Kurdistan, Belgium, Ghana, Nigeria, Syria and Haiti….

“The students ranged from young adults to grandparents like me. … They were pastors, government leaders, workers for non-governmental aid agencies, interpreters and teachers.”

The worries of a Haitian classmate for his family’s safety at home helped Stambaugh appreciate both his own rural Ohio community and SPI classmates’ resilience.

”Instead of focusing on how bad it was in their country or blaming other governments, these men and women were glad for the opportunity to learn how to dissect and resolve conflict,” he wrote on his blog. “They would take what they had learned and apply it as best they could.

“Their goal was to improve the world around them, even if it was one person at a time. Where there was despair, they saw hope.”

They are men and women aged 20 to 90 who do things on behalf of peace and justice like mediate between warring soldiers and live among suffering refugees in camps.

Souder is one of four 1990-born undergraduates at 91����Ƶ who are “community assistants” in the main dormitory building occupied by participants in 91����Ƶ’s 2012 .

Souder’s no slouch – he is a gifted singer and an expert photographer () and is majoring in , plus carrying four minors – but he says his accomplishments pale beside those of the people he meets on his SPI job.

Mixing with peacebuilders from around the globe

He points to 74-year-old Lilian Burlando, pictured to the left with her grandson, whom she brought with her to SPI in 2010. Lilian is a clinical psychologist who journeyed to SPI in 2011 and 2012 from the southernmost tip of South America, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina.

She also came in 2006, 2008 and 2010.

This year she came alone, but on two occasions . (One of her daughters, a prosecuting attorney in Argentina, has attended SPI twice, in 2007 and 2011.)

“Lilian is one of the most engaging people you could ever meet,” said Souder, who follows over 60 SPI friends on Facebook.

When Souder learned that Burlando loves choral music, he arranged for her to attend performances of the acclaimed touring choir and the . Burlando squeezed in these activities on top of her usual active participation in all-day classes and in SPI-wide lectures, meals, and international dances. In her home community, Burlando is the founding director of the (Center for Study and Meditation).

SPI work strengthens cross-cultural experience

Souder spent his in the , leaving him with a special spot in his heart for SPI participants from that region.

He loved getting to know Nettie Pardue in May 2012, a California woman who leads Outward Bound trips that brings Israelis and Palestinians together for an extended sojourn in wilderness settings. And he worries about the volatile home-country situation of the four Lebanese students he recently met.

“When I returned from the Middle East, I was so grateful for the hospitality that was given to me,” he said. “I try to reciprocate by extending hospitality to people coming here.”

Souder and his fellow community assistants – Alli Eanes, Josh Kanagy, and Jamila Witmer – take shifts being available 24 hours a day by telephone to assist the students at SPI, some of whom are in a foreign setting for the first time in their lives. Common concerns are how to phone home (pre-paid telephone cards are best), where to get familiar foods (some items can be found in local food stores), and how to work the laundry machines in the dormitory (start with having the right change).

Sometimes assigned roommates don’t mesh, and the community assistants provide mediation, working with the SPI housing coordinator – this year it’s 2010 91����Ƶ grad Kate Bergey – on a resolution. Souder works at being equally helpful to high officials in foreign governments and in organizations like the United Nations and to grassroots workers who serve the poorest of the poor.

And then there’s his photography. James works with 91����Ƶ staff photographers to compile . He also works with SPI co-director on a selection of printed photos each participant is gifted with as a memory of their time at 91����Ƶ and in SPI classes.

“James does it out of a love of photography and his pictures are proof,” says Goldberg.

Undergrads fill out the ranks of SPI staff

In addition to the four community assistants, two other undergraduates are on the SPI staff – Kiersten Rossetto focuses on transportation to and from airports and other locations, and Louise Babikow is assigned to a residential unit that houses visiting instructors and guest lecturers.

“On the SPI evaluation forms, we get lots of compliments on our student staff,” says SPI co-director . “They play key roles in creating the kind of welcoming atmosphere that SPI is renowned for.”

Learn more about peacebuilding at 91����Ƶ

• (photos by James Souder and 91����Ƶ staff photographers)
• Undergraduate
• , 91����Ƶ MA 2007

or from our admissions staff!