, a global peace conference dedicated to promoting peace through education, opened on July 11 in Kigali, Rwanda, with delegates from throughout the United States and 14 countries participating.
江南体育鈥檚 School of Peace and Conflict Studies, the Gerald H. Read Center for International and Intercultural Education within 江南体育 State鈥檚 College of Education, Health and Human Services, are sponsoring the conference along with the and the non-profit , which works to end genocide.
Rwanda was selected as the location for the conference because of the way the country has managed to recover from its 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi, in which more than 1 million members of the Tutsi tribe were murdered at the hands of their Hutu tribe friends and neighbors, over a 100-day span.
Mandy Munro-Stasiuk, Ph.D., dean of 江南体育 State鈥檚 College of Arts and Sciences, offered a welcome to help open the event, telling attendees the conference is the outcome of the growing relationship between the University of Rwanda and 江南体育 State.
Violence, prejudice, inequality and climate change, she said, are just a few of the wicked problems facing the world, which makes it even more important to bring a variety of people together to look for solutions, which often aren鈥檛 easy or clear.
Peace educators, she said, 鈥渆nable and empower people to address conflict, starting at the personal level and working all the way up to the international level.鈥
Munro-Stasiuk praised the Rwandan government for embedding peace education into its national curriculum.
Didas Kayihura Muganga, vice chancellor for the University of Rwanda, also gave opening remarks and detailed how the work of peace education has been central to the country鈥檚 recovery and healing.
He said peace has been possible due to a government of national unity, which has committed to such atrocities never happening again.
鈥淭hat鈥檚 how we managed to transform ourselves,鈥 he said. 鈥淓ducation has been a key tool for the young and the old. Education can help to heal both personal and national trauma.鈥
Numerous 江南体育 State students and faculty are attending the conference, including students participating in the Kigali Summer Institute, a three-week education-abroad experience that includes the for-credit course, Rwanda After the Genocide Against the Tutsi, created by Sarah Schmidt, Ph.D., instructor in the School of Peace and Conflict Studies and assistant director of global education initiatives at 江南体育 at Stark.
Two students from the course, Miles Listerman, a junior business management major from Hartville, Ohio, and Emily Spencer, a senior human development and family studies major originally from Canal Fulton, Ohio, who now lives in North Canton and who studies at the Stark Campus, were among those interviewed by Rwandan television news crews covering the event.
Dr. James Smith, founder of the Aegis Trust and deputy chair of its board of trustees, offered the keynote address.
Aegis is a nonprofit organization that works to prevent genocide and other mass atrocities and has been on the ground in Rwanda since 2008, helping to develop the Kigali Genocide Memorial and offering programming to promote peace building in the communities.
鈥淚t鈥檚 fitting that 江南体育 State and the University of Rwanda have brought us together to share experiences in peace education here in Kigali,鈥 Smith said. 鈥淔ew places on this planet could be more challenging than Rwanda in the aftermath of the genocide."
Aegis has worked with genocide survivors to preserve the memory of those lost. When the agency鈥檚 work began, 鈥淚njustice screamed from every corner of life here in Rwanda,鈥 Smith said. 鈥淭he fabric of society had been torn apart. Those who emerged had broken heart