Guerrier was 鈥渟elected from a highly competitive pool of over 400 applicants and representing a diverse mix of national and ethnic backgrounds,鈥� according to a Feb. 20 news release by the sponsoring organization, , an international educational organization headquartered in New York City.

EMU is one of 22 academic institutions in the United States and Europe with a selected student; it is likely the smallest among a group that includes Ankara University in Turkey, Harvard, Institut d’茅tudes politiques (Sciences Po Paris), Johns Hopkins, King鈥檚 College in London, Oxford and Princeton.

Selection criteria included 鈥渉igh academic standing, demonstrated experience in international diversity issues, outstanding recommendations and developed research interests,鈥� said the Humanity in Action release.

The 24 fellows will be studying, consulting and doing research together in three cities 鈥� Washington, Berlin and Paris 鈥� with a focus on exploring 鈥渢he different diplomatic approaches of each country, specifically on issues of diversity, democracy and pluralism,鈥� said Anthony Chase, Humanity in Action鈥檚 Director of Programs.

Multiple sessions in Washington D.C. will be hosted at the , according to the news release. Toward the conclusion of their fellowship, the group is expected to wrap up research on a subject relating to global diversity for publication by Humanity in Action.

At EMU, Guerrier has been a graduate research assistant at the , which led him to do site research on the impact of in promoting reconciliation in postwar communities in Sierra Leone.

In a Guerrier reflected on his time in Sierra Leone, pondering its recovery from an 11-year civil war, with these words (excerpted):

“With their machetes, the child soldiers ripped open the stomach of pregnant women to see who would win the game in guessing the gender of the unborn baby.鈥� This was a story I heard this summer, when I travelled for the first time in Africa to Sierra Leone to undertake a field research project exploring issues of justice. My question was, 鈥淗ow do we even begin to satisfy the justice needs of people after mass atrocities, genocide, and gross human rights violations?鈥�

I worked with Fambul Tok International, an NGO that was formed after the war to address community reconciliation through community-led peacebuilding efforts, including truth-telling ceremonies rooted in indigenous traditions.

As we drove through the dirt and rocky roads to access remote villages, the trembles of the car shook away my sense of worry as it reawakened childhood memories from my native country Haiti. It has been 300 years since my ancestors were uprooted around the same area in West Africa and brought to Haiti on slave ships. I said to myself, 鈥淚鈥檓 happy to be back after so long鈥�.

Through the focus group interviews I conducted, I was able to enter a sacred space within the Sierra Leonean culture鈥� A woman told how the rebels had burned down her house, killed her husband and daughter, and stole all her cattle. She recognized the perpetrator as her neighbor, and had known him since he was a child. Even though there was a lot of pain and sorrow, she understood that since he lived in the community, neither she nor the community could move forward without reconciling with the person who had caused this harm.

I was shocked at how many people were willing to forgive. They said that healing the wounds of their society and village could not take place without it. They believed that it was an essential element to stop the cycles of violence. I was shocked because I expected to hear a more punitive, western approach to justice in which prisons are always the solution and the perpetrator is removed from the community.

As typical of Guerrier鈥檚 reflective approach to peacebuilding, he wrote that being in Sierra Leone was humbling and eye-opening. 鈥淗aving observed the experiences of the people of Sierra Leone and their ability to overcome the horrors of the war through their wealth in values, I am no longer bogged down by the trivial things in my life when something goes wrong,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 live more lightly.鈥�

Guerrier is also a board member of an EMU-affiliated organization, , an organization that works across the United States to address the legacies of slavery.

HARRISONBURG – Lonnie Yoder will long remember the story told him by a young woman from Haiti who survived the country’s horrific earthquake.

“She was a nursing student in [Haiti’s capital city of] Port-au-Prince, who survived when her school building collapsed,” Yoder said. “She talked about holding the one-year-old baby of her best friend as the baby died.”

Yoder, 59, professor of pastoral and counseling and the new associate dean at Eastern Mennonite Seminary, has an avalanche of accounts he could share from his recent visit to Haiti.

Yoder traveled as part of a group on a mission run by Mennonite Central Committee and the Virginia Mennonite Mission.

The U.S. mission also included Joe Arbaugh, a building contractor from Verona, Elizabeth Showalter, a cheese-shop worker from Stuarts Draft, and Shelly-Ann Peart James, a graduate school grad and lecturer at a seminary in Jamaica.

The group stayed at an MCC home in Port-au-Prince.

Yoder’s group spent May 17-24 in Haiti, a visit that included three days of meetings with quake victims in Port-au-Prince. The sessions were designed to help Haitians deal with grief and despair brought on by the Jan. 12 disaster by sharing their stories of the catastrophe, which claimed an estimated 230,000 lives.

The tales, Yoder said, were “incredible stories of pain, suffering and death.”

The mission of 90 participants took place at Quisqueya Chapel, an interdenominational church in the city’s northeast section. Still reeling from the quake, residents opted to gather on a lawn outside the building.

Going On With Life’

In a setting where tents serve as houses and rubble rules the landscape, Yoder and his party marveled at the locals’ unnatural grit.

“I was amazed by the ability of the Haitian people to go on with life, in spite of the incredible challenges,” he said.

“We focused on psychological and emotional issues, but this was a spiritual experience,” Yoder added.

Fellow group member Eldon Stoltzfus, a Mennonite pastor from Goshen, Ind., shared Yoder’s amazement at Haiti’s resilient people. Stoltzfus, 62, had seen such toughness in better times, when he brought his family on previous mission trips to Haiti from 1974 to 1987.

“Even before the quake, the Haitian people had gone through hundreds of years of suffering,” he said. “I was awed by their ability to put it all into the context of life – they felt blessed that they were still alive.

“So many people go to Haiti and say, ‘Is there any hope?'” Stoltzfus said. “My response is as long as there are Haitian people, there is hope. It’s going to be hard work – very hard work – but I trust that as a people they will work through that.”

Contact Tom Mitchell at 574-6275 or mitchell@dnronline.com

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The EMU community is sending out prayers to the people of Haiti and offering ways for the campus community to support relief efforts in the wake of a 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti on Jan. 12, 2010.

“We have alumni and current students with connections in Haiti,” said Ken L. Nafziger, vice president for student life. “We want to support and encourage them, as well as provide ways for all students to feel empowered to do something in what can feel like a hopeless time.”

The community is invited to share thoughts and prayer concerns on the .

Collection baskets

EMU will set up collection baskets around campus for contributions to support Haiti relief efforts. Monies collected will benefit organizations such as , the relief, service and development agency with a long history in Haiti and with many EMU connections.

Collection baskets will be located in the Student Life Suite (), Business Office (), and front reception desk at .

Group prayer vigil

For those who wish to participate in group prayer, there will be a prayer vigil for Haiti held in the Campus Center Greeting Hall at 10:30 a.m. immediately following University Chapel on Wed., Jan 20. It will be led by campus pastors and student pastoral assistants.

Respond during basketball games

EMU’s next and games at home will provide another giving opportunity. Donations will be collected at half time of the games on (men’s game) Wed., Jan. 20 and (women’s game) Fri., Jan. 22 in Yoder Arena in the University Commons (see campus map).

Donations

Cash or checks for EMU’s Haiti response are welcome. Make checks out to ‘EMU Haiti response.’ Drop them in a collection spot on campus or mail them to EMU Development Office, 1200 Park Road, Harrisonburg VA 22802. The full contribution will go to trusted partner agencies in Haiti.

Other opportunities across campus will be posted as they are determined. These may include conversations and learning opportunities about the country of Haiti, its economy and infrastructure, prayer, reflection, assembling of material resources and more. Student groups such as the Student Government Association and Young Peoples Christian Association will spearhead events.

You can view a short video by a Mennonite Central Committee worker in Haiti:

Questions about EMU’s response can be directed to the Student Life office at (540) 432-4135.

Marie Rosy Kesner Auguste, right, and Guylene Clerger, an MCC worker in Port-au-Prince, were MCC-sponsored participants in 草莓社区’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI). Photo by Melissa Engle

A joint release of Mennonite Central Committee and 草莓社区

Marie Rosy Kesner Auguste will never forget her first view of a prison in her hometown of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Assaulted by the smell of dank cells, the split plastic jugs that served as plates and how dirty and unwell prisoners looked, Auguste vowed to work on behalf of those incarcerated.

It was a drastic change. Then a second-year law student, she had chosen her career carefully, planning to earn money, hoping to live comfortably.

Galvanized by her visit to the prison, she approached the leader of the National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH), telling him she wanted to help document abuses against prisoners and make sure people were held in a legal, just manner.

He urged her to look elsewhere. It is dangerous, he told her, and you might lose your life. He told her how he’d been shot because of his work. She remained undeterred.

Now a monitoring assistant for RNDDH, a partner organization of (MCC) in Haiti, Auguste meets with guards and officials and helps lead trainings to educate people about their rights.

Auguste says the most moving part of the job is meeting with prisoners and listening to their stories and their pleas and working with them to make sure their cases proceed through the justice system.

In Haiti, those who are arrested may be held at a police station for up to 48 hours in crowded holding rooms, where officials are not responsible for providing food or water. Auguste said she and co-workers have sometimes found people who have been held for weeks there.

They work to make sure prisoners are healthy and safe, investigating rapes and health crises, including a case earlier this year in which a prisoner with tuberculosis was held in a room with nearly two dozen other prisoners, exposing them all to the disease. They strive to make sure cases are moving through the justice system