By John Baker Brown

Campus Life is partnering with the Office of Spiritual and Religious Life and the Emory Alumni Association to enable Emory students to travel with the 2018 Journey to South Africa. A group of 17 Emory students, faculty, and staff will study the history of apartheid and the role of truth and reconciliation in the aftermath of its elimination in 1994. 

The trip is scheduled for May 16-28 and includes a racially and culturally diverse team of 11 women and six men. The group includes five undergraduate and two graduate students, as well as faculty and staff members representing various departments. Tomika DePriest, senior director of communications will represent Campus Life, which is providing scholarship support for students.

A second international trip was planned – the 2018 Journey to Nicaragua – but has been postponed due to the current political unrest in that Central American nation. The Nicaragua travel was geared to students in the 1915 Scholars Program, a Campus Life Office of Student Success Programs and Services (OSSPS) initiative that serves Emory’s first-generation students. Travel funds for participating students are provided by the Emory Alumni Association. The trip will be rescheduled, according to OSSPS director Adrienne Slaughter.

The website of the Office of Spiritual and Religious Life, which administers the initiative, reads: “Journeys of Reconciliation is an inter-religious immersion program, open to students, faculty, staff, and alumni of Emory University, that explores the root causes of conflict and builds relationships between Emory University and communities in the U.S. and around the world. At the program's heart is an affirmation that barriers of race, religion, nationality, gender, and class can and ought to be overcome. The program invites groups to encounter the world's complexity, to hear stories of pain and liberation, and to seek wisdom outside the university walls. Each trip carries the hope that participants will be transformed into more thoughtful and caring citizens of the world.”

In recent years, the Office of Spiritual and Religious Life has hosted Journeys of Reconciliation to the Middle East, Northern Ireland, Cuba, Mexico, Arizona, and Mississippi.

For daily reflections, follow along with Journeys of Reconciliation participants on Instagram  @emoryjourneys.

Learn more:

Journeys of Reconciliation  
http://religiouslife.emory.edu/journeys/index.html

Journey to South Africa to explore oppression, reconciliation  
Emory Report, Oct. 25, 2017  
http://news.emory.edu/stories/2017/10/er_tn_journeys_of_reconciliation/campus.html

1915 Scholars Program  
http://www.emory.edu/CAMPUS_LIFE/initiatives/scholarships_and_awards/1915_scholars.html