Florida State's 18th Annual Institute on College Student Values :

Six Billion Paths to Peace Workshop

Ineko Tsuchida and Nick Davidson present at Florida State University's Institute on College Student Values.

On February 1, Ineko Tsuchida and Nick Davidson of the Shinnyo-en Foundation co-presented a workshop titled, “Six Billion Paths to Peace: An invitation to dialogue about things that matter deeply,” at the 18th Annual Institute on College Student Values at Florida State University.   In their workshop, Ineko and Nick offered an overview of Six Billion Paths to Peace, the newest initiative of Shinnyo-en Foundation, and facilitated an activity that was recently conducted at a workshop on identifying and aligning values at the University of California, Berkeley.  After letting the workshop participants experience the activity, “Step In, Step Out,” Ineko and Nick facilitated discussion and reflection on the activity and its application in the participants’ own work with students.  This workshop comes from a series of activities in the Activity Toolbox found on the Shinnyo-en Foundation’s Six Billion Paths to Peace website.  This workshop suited appropriately to the theme of the conference, “Creating Campus Conversations: Finding Common Values Across Diverse Campus Cultures.”

This conference on student values began with a pre-conference workshop with Robert Nash and DeMethra LaSha Bradley of the University of Vermont on January 31 and featured a few other notable key note speakers, such as W. Robert Connor, Johnetta Cross Brazzell, and James Wagner over the three days.  In their pre-conference workshop and key note speech, Nash and Bradley spoke about the importance of promoting and practicing “moral conversation” on diverse campuses.  In “moral conversation,” they stated that no matter how outrageous others’ views might be, we must grant the right to be heard to others and engage in a conversation respectfully.  Each one of the speakers shared his/her perspectives on and experiences working with college/university students and faculty in diverse college/university settings.

Participants discuss values during the Six Billion Paths to Peace workshop

Many of the participants in the “Step In, Step Out” workshop said they felt inspired not only by the activity, but the entire Six Billion Baths to Peace initiative.  This conference represents just one example of how the initiative helps us all articulate our own individual Paths to Peace.