News and Information
Emory University
Atlanta, GA 30322

Release date: May 4, 1999
Contact: Elaine Justice, Assistant Director

EMORY STUDENTS, CHAPLAINS GO TO SOUTH AFRICA, HONDURAS, NORTHERN IRELAND ON 'JOURNEYS OF RECONCILIATION'

Summer trips for students that combine community service and learning in international settings are a tradition of Emory University's Office of Religious Life, but this year Emory chaplains and students are taking a new slant on the trips by combining service with learning more about how people in other countries deal with the issue of reconciliation on a daily basis.

Calling the trips "Journeys of Reconciliation," three interfaith groups of Emory students will travel to South Africa, Honduras and Northern Ireland during May, building homes, meeting with community leaders and religious groups, and attempting to understand both the roots of conflict and ways those rifts are being healed.

Approximately 20 students and staff will visit South Africa May 11-30 to help build houses in conjunction with the Georgia-based Habitat for Humanity. Students will be based in Durban, South Africa, and will be staying at a religious retreat center and visiting both black and white church congregations.

"This trip is the fulfillment of a dream," says the Rev. Luther Felder, a United Methodist minister and associate dean of the chapel and religious life. He will lead the trip with Lauren Cogswell, a Presbyterian and student at Emory's Candler School of Theology. Felder says students working with Emory's Habitat chapter first agreed in the fall of 1997 that they wanted to build a house in South Africa "as a gesture contributing toward reconciliation." The presence of South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Emory's campus this year, he says, "has further enhanced our ability to get students to see the vision. He has been a living, breathing testament that has brought life to the reality of reconciliation."

More than a dozen students and staff will travel to Honduras May 11-21 to help with post-Hurricane Mitch reconstruction, but they also will be charged with exploring avenues of reconciliation and understanding between the students' own country and Central America. United Methodist Volunteers in Mission is coordinating the trip, and Sammy Clark, a United Methodist minister and retired chaplain of Emory's Oxford College, is leading the group with Cynthia Shaw, director of student development at Emory and an active member of Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church.

Discovering the roots of conflict and learning about the country's reconciliation process is the goal of a trip to Northern Ireland May 11-26. Trip leaders are the Rev. Susan Henry-Crowe, dean of the chapel at Emory and a United Methodist, and the Rev. James Schillinger, Catholic campus minister. The interfaith group of students, faculty and staff will meet with religious, political and education leaders, says Henry-Crowe, "and we'll be talking with them about what kinds of initiatives we could undertake jointly to further the discourse and practice of reconciliation."

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