Bob and Alice Evans
Organization: Plowshares Institute
Cause: Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding
Personal Background/History: Bob and Alice Evans have devoted their lives to transforming conflict and pursuing peace around the world. They built the foundational skills for this work through a varied set of experiences early in their careers. Bob studied under William Coffin at Yale University, and together they organized student demonstrations at several schools, led a congregation in Tulsa Oklahoma and taught at Union and McCormick Seminaries. Each of these roles provided them with insight about the causes and consequences of conflict.
However, they credit a move to Uganda in the fall of 1972 as the experience that helped them break through their cultural cocoon, and create a global vision for peace and justice. When they arrived, the now-infamous Idi Amin had taken the Presidency by force, and as they settled into their role as visiting faculty at Makerere University, the brutalities of his regime started to become more and more apparent. When colleagues and students started to disappear, Bob and Alice made the decision that they must play a role in addressing the issue and joined the growing resistance movement on campus.
After their experience in Uganda, Bob and Alice were invited to South Africa where they learned of the atrocities suffered by their hosts under apartheid. They also learned of the African principle of Ubuntu, a concept which loosely translates to English as “I am because you are.” Bob and Alice realized that this philosophy was directly in line with theirs, and that they could learn much from the leadership of the anti-apartheid movement. At the core of the resistance movement was the belief that regardless of race, we are all born creatures of God, and that which separates one human being from another is not very great.
Action/Response: After they returned to the United States, Bob and Alice Evans devoted their lives to equipping local leaders in conflict areas around the world with skills for pursuing mediation, dialogue, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Drawing inspiration from their experiences abroad, Bob and Alice quickly began seeking ways to identify the common threads that run through us all. They knew that if they could help people cultivate respect for what they share in common, they would be able to help them uncover the underlying causes of their conflict instead of simply developing a solution to the immediate dispute.
In 1981, they founded Plowshares Institute and began developing new methods of educating the international community about global injustice. Since then, Bob and Alice have worked diligently to help local and international leaders understand the differences between conflict mediation, conflict resolution and conflict transformation. They believe that conflict transformation—the use of the energy of conflict to expose and transform its structural causes—is the key to planting the seeds of lasting peace.
Together, Bob and Alice have developed new methods for working through the most powerful and important conflicts that divide our global society, and have then shared these models with colleagues throughout the world. Plowshares’ signature programs include local conflict-resolution workshops, the training of local partner agencies, and traveling seminars that bring US community leaders on foreign immersion experiences to help break down the geographic and cultural barriers that still separate our increasingly globalized world.
Results/Accomplishments: The Evanses have intentionally created Plowshares Institute as a behind-the-scenes, facilitating organization. The organizational staff of four operates out of the rectory of the United Methodist Church in Simsbury, Connecticut, and instead of growing their infrastructure, Bob and Alice have focused their energies and resources on supporting and working behind their partners around the world.
The Evans have authored 12 books, taught hundreds of workshops, and led more than 800 leaders from industrialized countries overseas on immersion seminars since Plowshares inception.
In 2003, the Evans were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by members of South African parliament who believed that Plowshares training helped them to bring an end to apartheid and assisted with reconciliation efforts in its aftermath. The Evans also hold honorary Doctorates in Human Rights from the State University of Makassar in recognition of their part of the establishment of the Commission on Truth and Friendship between East Timor and Indonesia.
The story of Bob and Alice’s education, journey of discovery, exposure to the struggle for human rights around the globe, and their response to these experiences was the inspiration for The Purpose Project. It is through our partnership with them that we have begun to realize that it is the passion for brining justice to all that is important to pass from one generation to the next, not necessarily the organizations or the methodologies that have worked for our predecessors.
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