The Conference Theme of "Building Bridges through Interfaith Dialogue and Youth Participation" will engage participants in a dynamic experience of faith development as well as challenge them to positively respond to the universal call to holiness. Our world today more than ever before is faced with the challenge of overcoming the "faith divide" and the global citizenship divide in order to build the bridge of all bridges, the interreligious and international bridge that connects all humanity to God. The conference will create and promote interfaith collaboration and build bridges of trust, friendship and partnership among religiously diverse youth and provide a platform for local, national, regional and international collaboration.
The three-day conference and workshops will be practical -- rich with inspiration, international experience, and how-to, face-to-face workshops.The 200 youth interfaith participants will return home stronger with new partners and modern tools of communication for your homes, schools, and neighborhoods -- to heal cities, Nigera, Africa, all humankind.
Sunrise into evening, we will practice a new quality of listening-to-learn, to heal and create a new life among diverse youth-leader of Nigeria and Africa. We will discover that "an enemy is one whose story we have not heard."
Friday morning begins with a great variety of guests from government, and traditional and religious leadership. We will meet with opinion leaders from within and outside of Jos, and representatives of international organizations.
Friday afternoon through Sunday will be exciting and deep with hour-by-hour, face-to-face engagement in best practices of the unfolding public peace process for success locally and around Earth. The three days will include leading-edge experiences of human engagement and lasting social change, beginning at the heart with personal relationships and unprecedented inclusiveness.The leadership team will be shepherded by Libby and Len Traubman, flying in from California, USA.
Conference Facilitators Libby and Len Traubman co-founded the 18-year-old Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue of San Mateo, California. For years these Muslims, Christians, and Jews have been featured on CNN and global print and broadcast news. They co-produced three films: (1) DIALOGUE AT WASHINGTON HIGH, (2) PEACEMAKERS Palestinians & Jews Together at Camp; and (3) CROSSINGLINES IN FRESNO.
Libby and Len helped create and direct the successful PALESTINIAN-JEWISH FAMILY PEACEMAKERS CAMP that for five years gathered youth and adults from 50 different towns in Israel and Palestine to live together and reach new levels of communication and cooperation.
The couple is in Jos to offer experiences that have recently meant so much to diverse school students and other citizens including in Houston, Charlotte, Berkeley, and Cleveland, where the Traubmans were on the Design Team of the new U.S. National Peace Academy.Roots of their Dialogue are in South African interracial, interreligious story- and meal-sharing during apartheid 1980s, and in early 1990s Black-White meal-sharing in California homes.
