This 90-minute webinar will feature presentations from grassroots leader Elizabeth Kanini Kimau and the Maryknoll Sisters’ Peace Team. Each presentation will address the local history of violence and the peace-building efforts the leaders initiated; the impact of their work; how they train other leaders peace leaders; and how their insights about peace-building may apply beyond Kenya. Register here for the webinar.

Elizabeth Kanini Kimau is a Kenyan Grassroots Peace Builder. She is the founder of Horn of Africa Grassroots Peace Forum (HAP-Forum). Kanini is a Lecture at St Paul’s University. She over a decade experience in building a culture of peace in regions fragmented by prolonged inter-ethnic violence (Northern Kenya, Rift Vally and South Sudan). In her peace work Kanini focuses on capacity building grassroots people who are mostly affected by violent conflicts to become agents of their own peace. She is also a trainer on Participatory Action Research (PRA) and DELTA workshops (Based on methodologies of Paulo Freire). Between 2009 and 2016 she was an instructor in RECONCILE Peace Institute (South Sudan). In 2016 Kanini worked at Yambio Tobora Catholic Diocese (Western Equatorial in South Sudan) as a Peace Consultant. Kanini is a member of Catholic Non-violence Initiative (A project of Pax Christ International). Currently she is a PHD candidate at Centre for Nonviolence in Durban University of Technology (South Africa).

 The Maryknoll Peace Team’s “Conversations for Social Change” is a program designed to bring together people of diverse backgrounds and perspectives to engage in deep listening and open conversation.  The objective is to engage people in conversations that lead to broadening perspectives and changing behavior.  It is believed that social change only comes about when people expand their thinking and shift the way they relate to one another. The Sisters involved are Sisters Teresa Hougnon, Giang Nguyen, and Sia Temu.

Sister Teresa Hougnon was born in 1962 in Loup City, NE. Prior to joining the Congregation she entered the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, NY and earned a Bachelor of Science in National Security/Public Affairs in 1984.  She also served in the Army in Germany and worked in a women’s shelter in Brooklyn, New York. In 1996, she officially entered the Maryknoll Sisters Novitiate in Mount Vernon, NY and pronounced First Vows at the Maryknoll Sisters Center, Maryknoll, NY on September 12th, 1998 and her Final Vows on September 25th, 2005 in East Timor. Sister Teresa’s first assignment was to East Timor. She arrived just before the United Nations referendum in 1999. She served as the principal of a recently reconstructed high school. Shortly after making Final Vows in 2005, Sister Teresa turned the directorship of the high school over to the vice principal and other Timorese staff and prepared for a new assignment in Kenya, East Africa, developing “Conversations for Social Change.” In 2021 she was elected to serve as President on the Congregation Leadership Team for the next six years.

Sister Giang Nguyen worked in Kenya since 2006. She is a part of a team of Maryknoll Sisters who lived and worked together from 2006 to 2018. In 2008, the team started a program called “Conversations for Social Change” as a grassroots response to build bridges of understanding across differences that have led to overt conflicts. Giang has been a Maryknoll Sister for 29 years. Her first mission was in Taiwan with indigenous people and victims of human trafficking, mainly from Viet Nam. Her experiences gave her an understanding of unconscious biases based on socialized beliefs that can lead to violence of all forms. She supports individuals and work with groups from a variety of background at the intrapersonal, interpersonal and systemic levels. She has a background in trauma studies, is a practitioner of body-based healing modalities, and has a M.A. in Transformative Leadership.

Sister Sia Temu is a Tanzania religious missionary with the Maryknoll Sisters of St. Dominic, who has dedicated over decade to living and working in an intentional intercultural community.  As a member of the Congregation’s Peacebuilding Team, she has facilitated numerous workshops on intercultural living and conflict transformation across various regions, including, Kenya and Tanzania.   She is a facilitator of Conversations for Social Change Program in different parts of Kenya which were experiencing conflict. In addition, Sia facilitates Engaging Our Complexities (EOC) among Maryknoll Sisters. This experience has set a foundation for her awareness of our cultural complexities. Currently, she serves as the Vocation Directress for the Maryknoll Sisters.  Sia has a Bachelor of Theology from Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA). She also has a Graduate Certificate in Pastoral Studies from Catholic Theological Union (CTU), and a Certificate in Trauma Awareness and Transformation from Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI) of the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding in Eastern Mennonite University (EMU).