2019 Rotary Peace Fellowship Recipient, Bronwyn Manley, of Australia, recommended by a panel from our Rotary District 5040, was accepted by the University of North Carolina (UNC), her first choice, one of six universities around the world offering Rotary sponsored peacebuilding Master's degree or professional development certificate programs. The other universities are in the United Kingdom, Sweden, Japan, Australia and Thailand.
Bronwyn is passionate about all her goals and has been successful in everything she has set out to achieve. Her personal experiences influenced her ongoing commitment to building peace as part of her life’s work.
She and her family were chased from their home and community in Zimbabwe. As a result, she became acutely aware of how privileged she was to live safely in New Zealand, South East Asia and later in Australia. She knows first hand the anguish of losing everything and being stripped of one’s identity.
Through her current work with refugees and asylum seekers, she has met many who have gone through even worse traumas and may never find permanent security. While settling in Australia, she witnessed that those who were granted refugee were often treated like criminals and had to endure further hardship.
Bronwyn believes education to be a privilege. Her education has served her well. As an experienced educator, she is already advocating for asylum seekers and refugees. With her personal experiences, she has been able to help diffuse conflict and encourage peaceful solutions.
She has a passion to help the millions of displaced children with education and tools to help them survive on their journey to secure a livelihood, if they're trapped in makeshift refugee settlements or even if they are not lucky to be resettled at all. Her focus on these disadvantaged children has been on building innovative education tools to help them directly as well as to help the world understand their plight.
Bronwyn's choice of Rotary Fellowship Program at UNC is a perfect fit for her. The world, thanks to her and Rotary, will benefit.
Do you or members of your club know of any people interested, or engaged, in conflict resolution, peace building or similar work? If so, just send them a message with this link: https://www.rotary.org/en/our-programs/peace-fellowships If they're interested in the professional development certificate program or the Master's degree program, your club could screen him or her for eligibility and then possible recommendation to our Rotary District 5040 review panel. For Rotarians interested in the programs, there is an All About Rotary peace fellowship course available online through your MyRotary account Interested applicants can learn more and apply for the programs on the Rotary International website. You may ask for any information they fill out on the application for your club’s screening committee to review for eligibility. See link below Why get involved?
Summary of your action steps: Remind members about reaching out to your community organizations, university alumni departments, law enforcement, law offices, journalists, red cross, peace corps, youth exchange graduates/ambassadoral graduates etc to share about Rotary Peace Fellowships Club Peace Champions and other Rotarians who are passionate about peace follow up and seek potential applicants Use the resources and make this a topic of one of your upcoming meetings Gloria Staudt For questions or more information, please contact our District 5040 Peace Scholarship Chair, Gloria Staudt, |