Peace and Justice Initiative

Emmanuel Ande Ivorgba, Nigerian educator and peacebuilder will be our featured guest for our Conversation on Peace January 28th-31st.
Ivorgba will be on the Valencia campuses to celebrate the opening fesitivites of the week, to speak and work with students, faculty, and staff, and to lead a Q&A session of the film Project Happiness, which Ivorgba is featured in.

Emmanuel Ande Ivorgba has made contributions to human development, especially in the fields of Philosophy (Metaphysics), Peace Education, Interfaith Dialogue, Youth Empowerment, Education for Liberation, Religion and Spirituality, among others. He currently serves as Executive Director of New Era Educational and Charitable Support Foundation, a Nigeria-based registered nonprofit empowering youths in West Africa with capacities to emerge from a life on the streets, drugs and dysfunctional families, to becoming leaders capable of helping themselves and their communities. Emmanuel also serves as Council Ambassador to the Parliament of the World Religions, based in Chicago-USA. He also serves as Global Ethics Study Circle Coordinator for the California-based The Dalai Lama Foundation. Emmanuel has been a student and participant in Project Happiness since 2006 and became the Program Director for the African continent in 2011. He has personally taught the Project Happiness curriculum to nearly 2000 children. In 2007, with support of friends from the Mount Madonna School, Project Happiness and The Dalai Lama Foundation, Emmanuel founded Creative Minds International Academy; a Jos-Nigeria based co-educational institution providing values-based education, creative self-expression and positive character development. He currently lives in Jos, Nigeria with his family- Hope, Samuel and Daniel.

For Emmanuel's full bio click here.

As part of our week-long Conversation on Compassion, January 23-27, Agnes Umunna is coming to Valencia College for a three day residency to facilitate dialogue about her book, And Still Peace Did Not Come, as well as a lead a Q&A following the screening of Pray the Devil Back to Hell.

Following the second Liberian civil war, Agnes Fallah Kamara-Umunna used her radio show Straight from the Heart to expose the backstories of rebels who had perpetuated atrocities throughout a 24-year period. Those accounts provided a powerful platform to advocate for peace during a tumultuous period of reconciliation. The non-governmental, non-profit broadcasts from the capital city, Monrovia, often channeled the horrific stories of child soldiers who committed unspeakable crimes. Kamara-Umunna's radio program led to her work for Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission and provided a basis for her book, And Still Peace Did Not Come: A Memoir of Reconciliation.

The Patricia Havill Whalen Endowed Chair, Student Development and the Peace and Justice Initiative partner to bring Dr. George Lopez, professor at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at Notre Dame University for a three day residency to Valencia College. 

Lopez's work has been published in a wide range of social science journals including Human Rights Quarterly, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of International Affairs, The International Journal of Human Rights, Foreign Policy, and Ethics and International Affairs.  He served as a Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace and is currently consulting for the State Department in Washington, D.C.  His commentaries have been published in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, and the Christian Science Monitor.  A three day residency will offer Valencia faculty, staff, and students the opportunity to interact with a leading scholar in the field of human rights and peace studies.  His presence will serve to advance the mission of the college’s Peace and Justice Initiative, while continuing to engage our community in a discussion on conflict resolution.

Dr. George Lopez

Thursday, October 20, 2011: 1:00-2:00 PM
East Campus, Building 6, Room 110

This event is sponsored by the Patricia Havill Whalen Endowed Chair, Valencia's Student Development and the college's Peace and Justice Initiative.

Held on Tuesday, January 25, 2011: 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
East Campus - Building 3

Michael Nagler is Professor emeritus of Classics and Comparative Literature at UC, Berkeley, where he co-founded the Peace and Conflict Studies Program in which he taught the immensely popular nonviolence course that was webcast in its entirety as well as PACS 90, "Meditation" and a sophomore seminar called "Why Are We Here? Great Writing on the Meaning of Life" for fifteen years.

Among other awards, he received the Jamnalal Bajaj International Award for "Promoting Gandhian Values Outside India" in 2007, joining other distinguished contributors to nonviolence as Archbishop Desmond Tutu and peace scholar and activist Johan Galtung in receiving this honor.

He is the author of The Search for a Nonviolent Future, which received a 2002 American Book Award and has been translated into Korean, Arabic, Italian and other languages; Our Spiritual Crisis: Recovering Human Wisdom in a Time of Violence (2005); The Upanishads (with Sri Eknath Easwaran, 1987), and other books as well as many articles on peace and spirituality.

He has spoken for campus, religious, and other groups on peace and nonviolence for many years, especially since September 11, 2001. He has consulted for the U.S. Institute of Peace and many other organizations and is the founder President of the board of the Metta Center for Nonviolence Education. Michael has worked on nonviolent intervention since the 1970's and served on the Interim Steering Committee of the Nonviolent Peaceforce.

Michael is a student of Sri Eknath Easwaran, Founder of the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation, and has lived at the Center's ashram in Marin County since 1970. He gives workshops on Easwaran's system of passage meditation around the world.