IFI News
Bully Blues Busters: Positive Ways to Promote Kindness
Natural Awakenings, Naples, FL – Dr. Robert Enright’s Anti-Bullying Forgiveness Program is one of two anti-bullying programs featured in the February issue of Natural Awakenings, a publication that has more than 3 million readers in 82 US markets. According to Sharon Bruckman, founder of the 20-year-old magazine, “Our job is to keep our finger on the pulse of advancing thought in order to keep everyone apprised of the best healthy-life choices available to them.”
According to the Natural Awakenings article, most school anti-bullying programs focus on the prevention of unwanted behaviors. But Dr. Enright, co-founder of the International Forgiveness Institute, has developed a uniquely different approach.
“Because those that engage in bullying are often filled with rage from having been bullied themselves, they get to a point that they don’t care about the consequences of their actions, including detention,” Dr. Enright says. “Our program is meant to take the anger out of the heart of those that bully, so they bully no more.”
The National Education Association estimates that 160,000 children miss school every day due to fears of being attacked or intimidated by other students.
That Natural Awakenings article resulted in WZZM13 ABC TV in Grand Rapids, MI inviting Dr. Matthew Clark to be a guest on the 9 am talk show called Take Five & Company. Dr. Clark, Psy.D., runs The Clark Institute–Private Practice Psychotherapy for Children, Adolescents, and Adults in Grand Rapids. During that 4-minute TV segment, which you can watch at Positive Ways to Promote Kindness in Children,” Dr. Clark mentions the IFI, suggests viewers go to the IFI website, and gives the IFI web address.
Desmond Tutu Wins 2013 Templeton Prize for Forgiveness Work
Religion News Service, Columbia, MO – Desmond Tutu, the former Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his battle against apartheid, has won the 2013 Templeton Prize for his work in advancing the cause of peace and the spiritual principles of forgiveness.
“Desmond Tutu calls upon all of us to recognize that each and every human being is unique in all of history and, in doing so, to embrace our own vast potential to be agents for spiritual progress and positive change” Dr. John M. Templeton, Jr., president and chairman of the John Templeton Foundation, said in announcing the $1.7 million award. “Not only does he teach this idea, he lives it.”
In his remarks, Templeton, Jr. said the judges believed that “Tutu’s steadfastness to core Christian principles such as love and forgiveness has broken chains of hurt, pain and all too common instincts for revenge, and instead, has advanced the spiritual liberation of people around the world.”
Tutu, 81, said he was “totally bowled over” by winning the prize which will be presented at a May 21 ceremony at the Guildhall in London.
“We inhabit a universe where kindness matters, compassion matters, caring matters,” Tutu added. “This is a moral universe and right and wrong matter. And mercifully, gloriously, right will prevail.”
Archbishop Tutu is an Honorary Board Member of the International Forgiveness Institute.
Read the full story: Desmond Tutu wins 2013 Templeton Prize for work on forgiveness.
Dr. Enright to Speak on “Healing Individual Hearts and Nations”
Dr. Robert Enright, founder of the International Forgiveness Institute, will be giving a talk entitled, “Forgiveness Therapy and Forgiveness Education: Healing Individual Hearts and Nations,” on April 10, 2013, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Roundtable Luncheon, 11:45am to 1pm in Union South, Varsity Hall.
According to the luncheon announcement: Robert D. Enright is professor in the Educational Psychology Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is president of the International Forgiveness Institute, has lectured across the country, and has appeared on ABC’s 20/20.
Within psychology, the study and implementation of forgiveness therapy is now taken for granted. Thirty years ago, no such therapy existed. The pioneering research that opened this to the therapeutic world was started right here on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus by Professor Robert Enright, Department of Educational Psychology. He has now extended this work to include forgiveness education in contentious regions of the world such as Belfast, Northern Ireland, Liberia, and Africa.
In this presentation, Professor Enright will address what forgiveness is and is not, how people forgive in a therapeutic context, including the research which helped the American Psychological Association to judge forgiveness therapy as an empirically-verified treatment, and how forgiveness education operates in Belfast and Liberia.
A Heroic Vision for Ireland’s Churches
On Sunday evening, January 27, Dr. Robert Enright gave two talks in Mullingar, Ireland, one to clergy from a variety of Christian denominations and the other to the townspeople. Rev. Alastair Graham of the Church of Ireland hosted the event and Fr. Thomas Kilroy was the master of ceremonies for the talk with the townspeople.
Dr. Enright addressed a capacity crowd at All Saints Church, discussing what forgiveness is, why forgive, how we forgive, and how we can give forgiveness away to others in home, school, and place of worship. The goal of the meetings was to being a conversation on how forgiveness might form the basis for more unity among the various denominations within Mullingar–primarily Catholic, Church of Ireland, Presbyterian, Christian Fellowship, and Pentecostal. This is a heroic vision because of the historical tensions among Christian groups on the Island of Ireland. Forgiveness might prove to be a central unifying factor.
IFI Program Responds to Destructive Bullying Behavior
ABC News reports that bullying behavior has claimed yet another victim, Amanda Todd, age 15, who apparently killed herself after years of struggling with being bullied. She chronicled her struggle on a YouTube video.
“This kind of tragedy must end,” says Dr. Robert Enright, founder of the International Forgiveness Institute (IFI). “To address this critical issue, we just recently have produced an Anti-Bullying Forgiveness Program focused on helping those who bully to forgive.”
Those who bully usually have pent-up anger, according to Dr. Enright, and they displace their own wounds onto others.
“Our program is meant to take the anger out of the heart of those who bully so that they no longer bully others,” Dr. Enright added. “We hope the IFI Anti-Bullying Forgiveness Program gets into as many schools, internationally, as possible.”
The IFI program is for children in grade 4 (age 9) through grade 9 (age 14) and is intended for use with those who are showing bullying behavior. The purpose of this guide is to help such students to forgive those who have deeply hurt them. Bullying behavior does not occur in a vacuum, Dr. Enright believes, but can result from deep inner rage, not resulting from those who are bullied but often from others who have hurt them in their family, school, or neighborhood.
“We have scientifically demonstrated that forgiveness can be a powerful way of reducing pent-up anger,” Dr. Enright says, referring to his 25 years of forgiveness study and research. “We believe that the competent use of our new guide will not only reduce–but also play a part in eliminating–bullying behavior. It is our contention that bullying starts from within, as anger, and comes out as displaced anger onto the victim. Forgiveness targets this anger and then reduces it, thus reducing or eliminating the displaced anger which comes out as bullying.”
The eight-week Anti-Bullying Forgiveness Program is available in the Store section of this website.
