Melton Fellows at 2014 International Conflict Resolution Education Summit

What is Rwanda teaching the world about social healing and the limitations of forced reconciliation twenty years after the genocide? How do you make the case for intercultural understanding and citizenship education? How can we use movies and documentaries to promote peace and cooperation? These are just a few of the compelling questions that Melton Fellows Diana Heuss and Julian Klauke will tackle together with Learning Coordinator Markus Lang at the International Conflict Resolution Education (CRE) Summit, June 11-16 at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia (USA).

"The CRE Summit is a great chance for me to further develop skills in conflict resolution which I will be able to implement in future projects and my intended professional field. Also I am hoping to gain more knowledge and new perspectives about current theories in this area," says Diana in anticipation of the conference.

Diana, Julian and Markus will network with university educators and students, conflict prevention specialists as well as local, national and international policy makers, such as:

·       Joseph Sebarenzi, former Speaker of the Rwanda Parliament and author of God Sleeps in Rwanda,

·       Gary Shaw of the International Education Division at the Department of Education, Victoria, Australia, and

·       John Marks and Susan Koscis from Search for Common Ground, who have produced the movie Under the Same Sun that imagines a peaceful future between Israelis and Palestinians.

Diana and Julian successfully applied to participate in this Melton Opportunity. They hope to discover new ideas and suggestions as well as best practices in CRE to improve their Narratives Project. Based on the conviction that most people would not want to kill or hurt other human beings and only do so through de-humanizing their enemies, Julian and Neli Blum traveled to Israel and Palestine to record personal, conflict-related narratives of people in the Middle East. The team plans to make these recordings public with the goal to foster empathy and understanding between Israelis and Palestinians. For current information about the project, visit their Facebook page.

On Saturday, June 14, the three will present the Melton Foundation and the Narratives Project in a panel on Service Learning and Community Engagement.