Libby Hoffman returns to Eastern Mennonite University (EMU), where she attended the Summer Peacebuilding Institute in 1996 and 2000, to talk about humanitarian aid and crisis response. Hoffman is co-founder of Fambul Tok (Family Talk) in Sierra Leone, the world’s first large-scale community-owned and community-led reconciliation program. The title of her talk is “The Answers Are There: How Changing Our Lenses Opens Up Critical Resources for Peace, Development, and Community Health.”
She speaks at 4 p.m. on Monday, March 21, in Suter Science Center 106 as part of the Suter Science Seminars. Light refreshments are available at 3:45 p.m.
In her nine years of co-creating Fambul Tok and helping it to grow, Hoffman has seen how inviting local ownership and leadership opens powerful new resources for peace and development. [Fambul Tok and Hoffman were featured in a 2011 Peacebuilder magazine article.]
These resources proved to be a critical missing dimension of the national and international response to the Ebola crisis of 2014-2015. In this talk, Hoffman will discuss how Fambul Tok’s unique approach to community reconciliation was adapted to respond to the Ebola crisis. She will share her lessons as a non-local peacebuilder, funder and storyteller, and outline the powerful new framework for peacebuilding and crisis response emerging from this experience.
Hoffman is founder and president of Catalyst for Peace, a private foundation building peace from the inside-out, creating space for those most impacted by war or violence to be the ones to lead in rebuilding after conflict. She produced the multiple-award-winning documentary, “Fambul Tok,” and is a lead author of the companion book, both released in 2011.
A former political science professor at Principia College, Hoffman has an master’s in law and diplomacy (MALD) from Tufts Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a bachelor’s degree in political science from Williams College. She lives in Maine, and is married with three children.
The seminar is co-sponsored by EMU’s School of Graduate and Professional Studies.
Congratulations on the world’s first large-scale community-owned and community-led reconciliation program. That is an amazing accomplishment. We are definitely moving forward.