Schools of Forgiveness & Reconciliation, with Eileen Borris.

Beginning in the 1980’s Dr. Eileen Borris has been on the frontlines of forgiveness from the personal to the political. As a political psychologist she helps to rebuild war torn countries such as Liberia, Nepal, Pakistan, India, Israel and the Occupied Territories. Her work focuses on reconciling centuries of old conflicts and finding ways to forgive. She understands the deep down psychological issues surrounding conflicts and their healing. Besides going to worn torn countries, she leads the charge by training other high profile people such as diplomats, peacekeepers and humanitarian organizations. As the Director of Training and Program Development for the IMTD, whose mission is to promote a systems-based approach to international peacebuilding and to transform deep-rooted social conflict through education, conflict resolution training and communication, she designs and implements these programs in international peace building, conflict resolution, trauma recovery, forgiveness and reconciliation.

As such, is part of the "Schools of Forgiveness and Reconciliation" project, developed for the most violent and conflict-riden zones of countries like Colombia an Peru. The backbone of this project is the training of "motivators" who are trained to inaugurate these neighborhood schools, which are made up by 10-15 people and include a 10-module methodology that takes about 80 hours of work to complete. The motivator along with the chosen students get together in private homes, classrooms, churches or public spaces and tries to replicate the experience that he himself has previously lived through during his training, where the accumulated wisdom of the participants is converted into valuable support for those individuals that have been victims of all sorts of violence.

Join Eileen and Luciana on this interesting interview by listening online and calling in with questions.