Truth, Healing, and Reconciliation – An Invitation to a Campus Conversation

This free workshop, from 2–5 p.m. at UNC Asheville’s HIghsmith Student Union, Alumni Hall, is open to everyone, but space is limited. RSVP here.

Workshop Description

How do we, as an academic community, best support students, colleagues, and staff dealing with challenges and conflicting issues affecting relationships and individual/communal well being? How and in what ways do we reach out to one another, individually and collectively, in bringing about healing from our woundedness/brokenness and the possibility of reconciliation?  Participants in this workshop will have an opportunity to come together into a safe and accepting environment in which to discuss challenges and conflicting issues within, and explore their healing, however they define or describe it. In the spirit of deep, meaningful conversation or dialogue with open minds, they will assign voices to truth in order to understand one another. They will explore together ways of enriching and deepening their capacity to heal by turning conflict into an opportunity for reconciliation and growth.

About the Facilitator

Al Fuertes was a recipient of the 2015 Spirit of King Award, the 2014 Oscar Mentoring Excellence Award, the 2008 GMU Teaching Excellence Award and the 2001 AT&T Asia-Pacific Leadership Award. Al is a field practitioner and consultant who specializes in community-based trauma healing as an integral component in peace-building and conflict transformation. He travels extensively around the world, particularly in places affected by war, armed conflict, and natural disaster. Al works with government, religious, military, and community leaders, as well as NGO development workers, school administrators, teachers, youth, refugees and internally displaced persons. He is the faculty director of the global education program in the Philippines, a 6-credit summer course in Human Trafficking, Environmental Issues, and Grassroots Peace-building through Mason’s Center for Global Education (CGE), and in Cambodia, a 3-credit winter course in Post Genocide, Community Development, and Spirituality through the Social Action and Integrative Learning (SAIL). Al is an ordained minister with the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP). He currently works as a covenant minister of UCC Wellspring in Centreville, VA.