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HONOLULU—Oct. 16, 2007—Chaminade University’s Fujitani Interfaith Program and Crossroads Church’s Watada Lecture Series will co-sponsor the informal dialogue "Truth and Reconciliation: Religious Contribution to Peace with Justice" featuring guest speaker Glenda Wildschut, director of the Desmond Tutu Leadership Academy of South Africa and respondent Puanani Burgess, executive director of the Wai’anae Coast Community Alternative Development Corporation, on Monday, Oct. 29, at 12 p.m. The dialogue will be held in the Ching Conference Center located on the second floor of Eiben Hall on the Honolulu campus of Chaminade University at 3140 Waialae Avenue. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Dr. Poranee Natadecha-Sponsel at psponsel@chaminade.edu or (808) 735-4822.
Glenda Wildschut, director of the Desmond Tutu Leadership Academy of South Africa, is internationally known in the fields of reconciliation, human rights advocacy, trauma, and peace-building. She has been involved with international peace-building efforts in South Africa, Rwanda, Palestine, Sierra Leone, Indonesia, Italy, and other parts of the world. Appointed by South Africa’s first democratically elected president, Nelson Mandela, to serve as a Commissioner on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) under Desmond Tutu, Wildschut helped facilitate the peaceful transition from apartheid to democracy in South Africa. A registered nurse, midwife, psychiatric nurse, community nurse practitioner, and nurse educator, she has taught at the University of Cape Town and the University of the Western Cape and worked at the World Health Organization’s headquarters in Geneva. Wildschut was also the first South African recipient of the Health and Human Rights Award by the International Institute for Nursing Ethics.
Puanani Burgess, the executive director of the Wai’anae Coast Community Alternative Development Corporation, works as a facilitator, consultant and cultural translator in Hawai’i, the U.S. and the Pacific, through poetry, story telling and a culture-based participatory process called "Building the Beloved Community." Puanani’s activism has taken her to corporate boardrooms, courtrooms, community meeting halls and universities. She helped develop backyard aquaculture as a family-based community economic development strategy based on the Hawaiian value, "Work is Medicine.”
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Celebrating more than 50 years of educating students for life, service and successful careers, Chaminade University offers programs of study grounded in the liberal arts with day, evening, online and accelerated courses. The main campus is located in Kaimuki at 3140 Waialae Ave., Honolulu, HI 96816, with 10 satellite locations around Oahu military bases and Catholic parishes and schools. For more information, visit the Chaminade Web site at www.chaminade.edu or call (808) 735-4711.
