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802.258.3388
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802.258.3320
PO Box 676, 1 Kipling Road
Brattleboro, VT 05302 USA
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Shelley Anderson
| Shelley Anderson, who now works for the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, was nominated for the Noble Peace Prize as part of the 1,000 Women for Peace campaign in 2005. She participated in the CONTACT Summer Institutes in 1999 and 2000, and completed the CONTACT Graduate Certificate Program. |
"The highlight of my CONTACT experience was meeting dedicated activists for peace from many different countries. I make use of the theoretical knowledge that I gained, and pass this on during my work as a nonviolence trainer with the International Fellowship of Reconciliation's Women Peacemakers Program. But it is the personal stories that stay with me: the story of the Jewish daughter of Holocaust survivors and her dialogue with the daughter of a Nazi official; the story of the Palestinian who, after showing the scars on his back from cigarette burns inflicted by an Israeli soldier, told how he wept after visiting Auschwitz.
The stories reveal the depths of suffering created by war, and make me more determined to do what I can to stop this suffering. The stories reveal the depth of hope and compassion people can show in even the worst hells, and inspire me.
I share these stories during the nonviolence trainings the Women Peacemakers Program (WPP) supports, and collect even more stories of courage and stubbornness, from women in Aceh, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, and Cambodia. I share them during the regional consultations the WPP organizes for women in conflict situations. And I collect even more stories, which point to the essential yet undervalued and under resourced role women have in building peace, during the annual WPP Training of Trainers, which has trained 29 women from 18 countries. In turn, these women have conducted over 52 gender-sensitive nonviolence trainings, equipping 1,458 people (one-third of them men and boys) with skills in active nonviolence. In 2007 the WPP desks in Africa and Asia will begin their own regional training of trainers in active nonviolence-and even more stories will be gathered."
Shelley Anderson, Program Officer
International Fellowship of Reconciliation
Women Peacemakers Program
Spoorstraat 38 1815 BK Alkmaar the Netherlands Tel. +31 72 512 3014 Fax. +31 72 515 1102 email: s.anderson@ifor.org