Grassroots Leadership
That is Empowered

We feel we have made significant progress toward our objective of empowering those who participate with us in creating new conversations and new possibilities for themselves and their communities.

Among the specific results we can point to:

We have brought together participants from different and sometimes antagonistic backgrounds, views, histories, and positions in new ways that have fostered relationship, new conversations, and a growing sense of trust and possibility.

We continue to expand the circle of participants each year, not only in numbers but in consistently reaching out to and including those who feel their voices are not heard.

We have created an environment of trust and safety in which participants report they are able to relate to each other and have honest, open, and very difficult conversations within and across divisions-conversations they say they rarely have elsewhere.

We have encouraged remarkably committed men and women to continue in work that is both difficult and dangerous and to do so with a new boldness and a new sense of confidence that they are not alone.

We have given participants new models for convening and working in community that they have used to develop new programs, new leadership and broader participation in their work and communities.

We have tackled issues of cultural and historical identity in ways that participants have been able to see and move beyond past limitations and reach out to others.

We have established a foundation of trust between the Conference participants and the Mastery Foundation on which we can build together. We have demonstrated we have no hidden agenda and are only about empowering the kind of authentic relationship and dialogue that creates the possibility of reconciliation.

Mary McAleese, President of Ireland, greeting Fr. Gerry O'Rourke

"The work of peace today is not so much the work of beating swords into ploughshares as it is the work of creating new conversations and new ways to communicate and be with one another."

Mary McAleese,
President of Ireland