Catalysts

These are some of the things that have inspired us to do the work that we’re doing, in the way that we’re doing it. We’ve found these ideas not only thought provoking, but action-inducing. This list is only a beginning—we’ll continue to add as we go.

“We have to re-discover Africa. The first discovery of Africa by Europe was the wrong one. It was not a discovery. It was an act of misperception. They saw, and bequeathed to future ages, an Africa based on what they thought of as important. They did not see Africa. And this wrong seeing of Africa is part of the problems of today. Africa was seen from a point of view of greed, of what could be got from it. And what you see is what you make. What you see in a people is what you eventually create in them. It is now time for a new seeing. It is now time to clear the darkness from the eyes of the Western world.

“The world should now begin to see the light in Africa, to see its sunlight, to see its brightness, its brilliance, its beauty. If we see it, it will be revealed. We only see what we see. Only what we see, what we see anew, is revealed to us. Africa has been waiting, for centuries, to be discovered with eyes of love, the eyes of a lover. There is no true seeing without love.”

-Ben Okri, Nigerian writer, and winner of the Booker prize in literature

With its "uncomfortable commitment to bringing the perpetrator back into the family, Africa has something to say to the world."

--Alex Boraine, deputy chair of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Four part series in The Christian Science Monitor profiling the ways different African countries are finding paths to forgiveness and reconciliation after war.

Africa’s Sudden Splash of Good News by John Prendergast

Trauma Care, by Dr. Richard F. Mollica
For over 25 years, Harvard psychiatrists have helped and studied victims of many of the world's most devastating events. What they found is more heartening than you might think.

More to come ....