Rotary Peace Fellow Barbara Herthel

By Barbara Servulo Herthel, a Rotary Peace Fellow from Brazil

As I reached the end of my Professional Certificate Fellowship Program at the Rotary Peace Center at Chulalongkorn University, I found myself dealing with a lot of feelings and thoughts about this experience. I am very thankful for the three months, all the sharing and learning I received from others, the daily routine, the field trips, and more.

To express my gratitude, I decided to come up with 5 reasons to apply for this program, based on my own experience and the lessons I learned.

• Sharpen your motives:  Through the application process, you have a chance to reflect on your experiences, review your life story, recap your achievement to date, and affirm your interest in the peace field. This process was my first great learning experience.
• Embrace diversity: Having the opportunity to study, learn and make friends with people from different backgrounds and life experience encourages you to examine your attitudes and values, and in turn broaden your perspective of the world. It also helps raise self-awareness and an awareness of others.
• Learn to face conflict: Yes, we don’t have to be afraid of conflicts! The program is a great learning exercise in accepting and practicing peaceful resolutions of conflicts. Understanding conflicts is the first step. They are inevitable, but what the program teaches is finding creative solutions to conflicts through communication, cooperation, and critical thinking. It’s important to study conflicts and understand why they occurred and what can be done to bring a peaceful resolution.
• Grow your knowledge of peace and conflict: The program provides access to great resources on conflict resolution, including books, references, classes, field study trips, great professors, and amazing colleagues. Peace fellows have their views broadened, as they gain care, courage, and wisdom to face future interventions.
• Be inspired. The program is intense, and will strengthen you to continue working for a more just and peaceful world. You will be inspired by stories and experiences from other Peace Fellows and your teachers, as they share wisdom and challenge you to rethink our views about conflict and peace. The great staff at the Rotary Peace Center at Chulalongkorn University will take care of all the details, leaving you ready to learn how to change the world.

Learn how to apply to be a Rotary Peace Fellow