Tagged: “Forgiveness Education”

The Missing Piece to the Peace Puzzle – FORGIVENESS

While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is invoking unwelcome recollections of previous territorial wars, an international multidisciplinary team of researchers that has been meeting since 2014 is discovering what makes some societies more peaceful than others. One of the crucial elements for promoting peace and nonviolence, they say, is an individual’s capacity for forgiveness—a concept International Forgiveness Institute co-founder Dr. Robert Enright has been espousing for decades.

“We launched our first peace initiative in 2002 when we began teaching forgiveness education in Belfast, Northern Ireland,” Dr. Enright recalls. “I was convinced back then, and I believe even more so now, that forgiveness is the missing piece to the peace puzzle. These study results are nothing new.”

During his 35+ years of studying the virtue of forgiveness, Dr. Enright has repeatedly demonstrated that as people forgive, they become less angry, less depressed, less anxious, and more hopeful of their future. In other words, people become more peaceful within themselves, making the possibility of peace with others more likely. He outlined his grass-roots approach in this 2010 article: Forgiveness Education as a Path to Peace. Read Dr. Enright’s latest blog for Psychology Today, Forgiveness as a Missing Piece to Peace Between Ukraine and Russia.

The study results about crucial elements for peace come from a team of experts that is part of the Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity (AC⁴), a multidisciplinary research institute based at Columbia University in New York City. AC⁴ is a unit of the university’s Earth Institute which is made up of scholars spread across 35 research centers and programs encompassing more than 850 scientists, students, postdoctoral fellows and staff.

The group’s mission is to employ models and methods from complexity science (a branch of applied mathematics) to study the dynamics of peaceful societies with the goal of “revolutionizing peace and conflict resolution.” AC⁴ research has identified and studied more than 80 internally peaceful societies around the globe and identified their common characteristics including:

• abundant forgiveness reservoirs that help mitigate anger, fear, and negativity; and,
• higher levels of capacity for forgiveness that can lead to the endorsement of peace beliefs.

Working together with organizations like the United Nations (UN), the International Peace Institute, and The World Bank, AC⁴ is exploring various models (i.e., the role of forgiveness, victim memory, and reconciliation) in the actual peace process in countries like Colombia, Israel-Palestine, and Afghanistan. In the process, they are generating and promoting new practical, transdisciplinary, evidence-based approaches to peace.

Like AC⁴, the International Forgiveness Institute (IFI) has also collaborated with peace-seeking organizations going as far back as 1999 when Roy Lloyd, IFI Board President, was part of a delegation led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson that traveled to Belgrade, Yugoslavia (now Serbia). That delegation not only gained the release of three American soldiers captured during the Kosovo Conflict but also urged Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic to accept a UN offer to establish a foreign peacekeeping force in Kosovo.

In 2014, Dr. Enright laid the foundation for “Forgiveness as a Peace Tool” at a 2-day work session hosted by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in New York City. Dr. Enright, a University of Wisconsin educational psychology professor, was named to serve on a UN international “Expert Group” that was established to begin developing intervention models aimed at ending gender-based violence around the world. Three weeks later, delegates at the United Nations Peace Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, resolved that “justice and forgiveness” are essential tools in peacebuilding.

“Peace is not a goal to be reached but a way of life to be lived.”

Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Nobel Peace Prize-winning South African Anglican cleric;
25+ years Honorary Board Member – IFI

More recently, Dr. Enright last fall negotiated the establishment of the International Forgiveness Institute’s newest partner, IFI-Pakistan. That Branch Office is housed at the Government College University Lahore (GCU-Lahore, Pakistan) and is the first of its kind in Pakistan and in Southern Asia. The unit will function in collaboration with the IFI with the mission of developing and disseminating forgiveness interventions and methodologies throughout the country.

“Because only a few psychologists have expertise in this field in Pakistan, we can now offer an accredited course teaching forgiveness psychology,” said GCU Vice Chancellor Dr. Asghar Zaidi, in announcing the partnership. “Forgiveness liberates us from anger, resentment, bitterness, and destructive behavioral patterns that are prevalent in our society.”

Dr. Enright has been working since 2016 with Dr. Iffat Batool, a GCU psychology professor, who has tirelessly pursued creation of the unit. Pakistan was one of the seven countries that conducted research and validation on Dr. Enright’s new research tool, the Enright Forgiveness Inventory-30 and several of Dr. Enright’s research tools have already been translated into Urdu, one of the two official languages of Pakistan (along with English). A request is also pending to get the publisher’s approval to translate Dr. Enright’s book 8 Keys to Forgiveness into Urdu for use with GCU’s “Forgiveness Psychology and Practice” course.

Dr. Enright is also working closely with the National Director of the Liberia Forgiveness Education Program (that the IFI established 10 years ago after the country’s civil war finally concluded) to implement forgiveness interventions that could help with reconciliation efforts between the various factions: Can Group Forgiveness in Liberia Lead to Peace? His peace efforts in other parts of the world are outlined on the IFI website at Peace Education Goals.

Learn More:

• Interactive Sustainable Peace Casual Loop Diagram (AC4 Sustainable Peace Project)
• How to Live in Peace? Mapping the Science of Sustaining Peace (American Psychologist)
• The Sustainable Peace Mapping Initiative (Columbia University)
• Contribute to the realization of sustainable peace. Support the IFI with a charitable gift.

Forgiveness Education for Students in Nursing Program Helps Reduce Anxiety and Depression

A research study published last month, utilizing Dr. Robert Enright’s forgiveness intervention model, showed that students in college nursing programs would benefit from a forgiveness intervention in the areas of self-care and forgiveness facilitation.

The nursing students, randomly assigned to either an experimental group or a no-contact control group, used Dr. Enright’s book 8 Keys to Forgiveness as the project’s treatment manual. After studying one chapter a week for 8 weeks, the students in the experimental group showed greater improvement in forgiveness compared to those in the control group from the pretest to the posttest which was maintained at the four-week follow-up. In addition, those in the experimental group showed statistically significant decreases in anxiety, depression, and fatigue from pre-testing to both post-testing and follow-up testing periods.

The study was conducted by a team of 8 researchers from the Liberty University School of Nursing (Lynchburg, VA) under the direction of Jichan J. Kim, Associate Professor of Psychology at Liberty. Dr. Kim has been the lead investigator on more than a dozen forgiveness-related studies over the past several years.

This latest study, The Efficacy of a Forgiveness Bibliotherapy: A Randomized Controlled Trial with Nursing Students, was published in the Journal of Holistic Nursing (JHN) on Jan. 10, 2022. JHN is a peer-reviewed quarterly journal with a focus on advancing the science and practice of holistic nursing and healthcare.

“The need for forgiveness education for nursing students has risen dramatically as responsibilities have broadened for nursing professionals,” according to Dr. Kim. “Our study positively demonstrated that the use of bibliotherapy can be a cost-effective way to promote the virtue of forgiveness for nursing students who are likely to be in need of exercising self-care and would have opportunities to facilitate forgiveness for their patients.”

Bibliotherapy, Dr. Kim explained, is a therapeutic approach that uses literature (in this case Dr. Enright’s 8 Keys to Forgiveness) to support good mental health. This study, he added, demonstrated not only the effects of forgiveness, as numerous studies have done in the past, but also the feasibility of using a forgiveness bibliotherapy that can be easily adopted into the existing nursing curriculum.

That same approach has been used by Dr. Enright, co-founder of the International Forgiveness Institute (IFI) and the man Time magazine calls “the forgiveness trailblazer,” in a slightly different format over the past two years. Dr. Enright has worked with Dr. Chontay Taylor Glenn, PhD, RN, PMHNP-BC, to enroll a total of eight University of Michigan-Flint nursing students in the IFI’s Forgiveness Therapy training course.

Dr. Glenn is Assistant Professor & Project Director of the Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner Residency Program at UM-Flint. In addition to incorporating the IFI’s forgiveness training into the curricula for her nursing students, she also developed a program through which nine Flint-area community counselors completed the Forgiveness Therapy online continuing education course. Dr. Kim provided three hour-long training sessions by Zoom as part of that collaborative effort between Dr. Glenn, Dr. Enright, and himself.

The newly trained counselors in Flint are also undertaking an expanded role in their community, according to Dr. Glenn–providing forgiveness education classes and case coordination to Flint-area adolescents who have experienced adverse childhood experiences. The project is funded by a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation in Battle Creek, MI.

About Dr. Kim

Dr. Jichan J. Kim

Jichan J. Kim is an Associate Professor of Psychology and the Director of the M.A. in Applied Psychology program at Liberty University, Lynchburg, VA. His research interests include the effects of interpersonal and intrapersonal forgiveness as well as the integration of psychology and Christianity.

Dr. Kim has degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (M.S. & Ph.D.), Harvard University (Ed.M.), Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (M.Div. & M.A.), and City College of New York (B.A.). He also has extensive ministry experience in New York City, Boston, and Madison (WI), serving various age groups in Korean immigrant congregations.

Learn More:

• Nursing Students Research Report Abstract
• Bibliotherapy Defined
  
• Overview of the IFI’s Forgiveness Therapy Course

I think it is so important to foster forgiveness in families.  Children need to learn to forgive.  What advice can you give to parents for this?

Yes, I agree that it is of vital importance that this happen so that we can fortify children against the injustices that likely will occur when they are adults.  Knowing how to forgive can be a protection against the build-up of unhealthy anger.  Here is a link to one of my essays on the Psychology Today website that gives details on how a family can become a forgiving community:

Is Your Family a Forgiving Community?

Forgiveness Education in Greek Schools Expands with IFI – University Collaboration

More than 3,000 grade school students in Greece are learning how to reduce their anger, increase cooperation, gain resilience, and transform their traumas into personal character strengths through Forgiveness Education classes during this 2021-2022 school year.

“Trauma Transformation Through Forgiveness Education” is a social-emotional learning (SEL) program developed by Dr. Peli Galiti, Ph.D., M.Ed., research scholar at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Dr. Galiti, a native of Athens, is also Director of the Greek Forgiveness Education Program (GFEP) started in 2014 by the Madison-based International Forgiveness Institute (IFI).

Dr. Peli Galliti, Ph.D., M.Ed.

“This one-of-a-kind program is based on the educational research studies conducted by Dr. Robert Enright who pioneered the field of Forgiveness Education,” says Dr. Galiti. “His studies have demonstrated that Forgiveness Education classes help students reduce in anger and hostile attribution, increase in empathy, and actually result in improved grades.” 

Dr. Enright is a UW-Madison educational psychology professor who co-founded the International Forgiveness Institute in 1994. He has developed comprehensive Forgiveness Education curricula for students in grades K-4 through 12^th that are now being used in more than 30 countries around the world.

According to Dr. Galiti, the new program is actually a collaboration between the IFI, UW-Madison, and two Greek universities—the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (where Dr. Galiti previously lectured). Funding is provided by the Athens-based Stavros Niarchos Foundation, one of the world’s leading private, international philanthropic organizations. The program also has the endorsement of the Greek Ministry of Education.

Dr. Galiti began implementation of the Trauma Transformation program last September by leading a series of Forgiveness Education workshops for 110 Greek teachers. Those teachers are delivering the forgiveness classes this semester at schools in four Greek cities–Athens, Larisa, Patra, and Thessaloniki.

That training focused on techniques and methods the teachers could use to help their students manage traumatic experiences and any personal or relational difficulties that might cause harm and pain. Thematic instructional units included:

• Forgiveness Education theory and principles.
• Why forgiveness is necessary and how it is applied in the school environment.
• Theories about trauma and its treatment.
• Transformation and wound healing through Forgiveness Education.
• Collaboration in the classroom and conflict resolution.
• The experience of Forgiveness Education in Greek schools: Best Practices and Case Studies.

These grade school teachers in Athens were among the 110 teachers who received Forgiveness Education training conducted by Dr. Peli Galiti as part of the collaborative effort between the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Thessaloniki.

The collaborative training efforts for this Forgiveness Education program have received support and major funding through the Greek Diaspora Fellowship Program that is designed to help avert Greece’s brain drain and develop long-term, mutually beneficial collaborations between universities in Greece, the United States, Canada, South Africa and Australia. The Fellowship Program is managed by the Institute of International Education in collaboration with the Fulbright Foundation in Greece, and funded by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.

In 2017, Dr. Galiti was one of 30 Greek- and Cypriot-born scholars representing 28 prominent United States and Canadian universities who traveled to Greece to conduct academic projects with their peers at Greek universities as part of the Greek Diaspora Fellowship Program. As part of her fellowship, Dr. Galiti hosted workshops about Restorative Justice and Forgiveness Education, along with conducting research about bullying prevention and class collaboration.

• Visit the Greek Forgiveness Education Program website.
• Watch a 4 min. 12 sec. video about the Greek program: Learning to Forgive.
• Read more about Dr. Galiti’s eductional work in Greece.
• Watch a video webinar on Greek Forgiveness Education featuring presentations by Dr. Galiti and Dr. Enright.

About the Stavros Niarchos Foundation:

The Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) (www.SNF.org), is one of the world’s leading private, international philanthropic organizations, making grants in the areas of arts and culture, education, health and sports, and social welfare. Since 1996, SNF has committed more than $3.3 billion through 5,100 grants to nonprofit organizations in 135 countries around the world.

The Foundation funds organizations and projects that are expected to achieve a broad, lasting and positive impact for society at large, and exhibit strong leadership and sound management. The Foundation also supports projects that facilitate the formation of public-private partnerships as an effective means for serving public welfare. In addition to its standard grants, the SNF has continued to respond to the urgent needs of Greek society, by providing relief against the severe effects of the socioeconomic crisis through three major grant initiatives of $378 million.

A Promise Kept

Have you ever made a promise to love, honor, and obey outside the covenant of marriage?  In a certain way, I have. 

That promise, which I made in 2002, has now been fulfilled as we turn the clock to 2022.  We at the International Forgiveness Institute had just decided to start forgiveness education programs at the century’s turn.  The point was this: If learning to forgive can aid people’s recovery from deep injustices against them, then wouldn’t it be a good idea to help young children learn to forgive so that, once the storms of life hit them as adults, then they would have a tool, forgiveness, to avert confusion, resentment, and even possible abiding anger and anxiety?  It seemed to be worth a try and so we looked around the globe with this question: Where is there a society that now is post-conflict, which has suffered, and which might benefit from forgiveness education?

Our team at the International Forgiveness Institute, after much thought and discussion, centered on Belfast, Northern Ireland for four reasons: 1) There had been The Troubles across Northern Ireland, in which Irish Catholics and British Protestants were in an escalated conflict since 1972’s Bloody Sunday in Derry/Londonderry; 2) there was a signed peace accord in 1998, which reduced the conflict, but still there was a post-conflict sense of tension; 3) the two groups were English-speaking and so we would not have to start with interpreters; and 4) Ireland and Northern Ireland are two of the closest ports-of-call from the Eastern United States.

So, off my two sons and I went in July of 2002, landing first on the West Coast of the Emerald Isle and then to Belfast, where we met the esteemed Anne Gallagher, who formed Seeds of Hope to do her best to bring peace to Northern Ireland.  Anne was amazing in introducing us to primary school personnel and we had the great honor to start forgiveness education in both St. Vincent de Paul Primary School and Ligoniel Primary School, both on the Ligoniel Road in Belfast.

“Forgiveness isn’t something that’s talked about with reconciliation, but it’s needed to bring closure to the pain and suffering experienced in Northern Ireland. You can’t contemplate hope unless you address despair. To heal the wounds of Northern Ireland I believe you have to see humanity in the face of the enemy. Forgiveness is a journey.”

Anne Gallagher (1953-2013)

Upon my first visit to the principal of St. Vincent de Paul School, Mr. Brian McParland, he heard our proposal for forgiveness education and agreed that this is a vital vision for Northern Ireland.  He assented to having this programme pioneered in his school.  Yet, he quickly added this: “You will not last more than 3 years here in Belfast.”  I was surprised to hear that and asked, “Brian, why do you say that?”  He looked at me and said, “No one lasts more than 3 years in Belfast.  After that time, people grow weary, the thrill of travel wears off and they quit.”  I took a deep breath and answered, “Brian, I will give you 20 years.”  He looked at me with kindness, but said nothing.

Well, as I consult Siri on the Apple Watch, I see that the calendar is about to turn to the year 2022.  Hold on for a minute. . . I have to do a little bit of quick math.  Ahh, yes. . . it has been exactly 20 years now since my promise to Mr. McParland.  Our International Forgiveness Institute has successfully implemented forgiveness education now in many schools of Belfast and surrounding communities.

As we end the 20th year, some of us at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are doing a research program with 18 classrooms of primary 7 students (grade 5 in the United States), across Northern Ireland, funded by the John Templeton Foundation.  This will culminate in an international conference in Madison, Wisconsin, led by Jacqueline Song of our International Forgiveness Institute, in which these teachers will participate.

As I look around, I see that Mr. Brian McParland now is retired from his educational duties.  Mrs. Claire Hilman, the principal at Ligoniel Primary in 2002, also is retired.  Dear Anne Gallagher now has passed to eternal life.  No other educators who joined us two decades ago are still there.  As I look around, I see that I have kept my promise now only to God and me.  And that is sufficient for the promise-keeping.  I hope that at least some in Northern Ireland are the better for it.

A promise kept may bear fruit of which none of us is aware and this is why we press on with the vision for forgiveness education, started two decades ago.

Robert