From the director's desk . . .

Dear ELI friend,

We close a year that must be counted among the most deadly in recent memory.We grieve over the atrocities man inflicted upon man -- the tens of thousands killed through war, terrorism, torture and tyranny. Yet in 2005, man’s penchant for inflicting human suffering was dwarfed by a series of natural disasters of colossal proportions: from the great tsunami that ushered in the new year, killing well over 100,000 across Asia and Micronesia; to hurricanes Rita, Katrina and Stan that hammered the Gulf of Mexico coastlines and created deadly mudslides throughout Guatemala; to several major earthquakes, the most recent in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which claimed over 50,000 lives and left nearly 3 million homeless. Elsewhere, extended droughts in Niger, the Horn of Africa and other parts of the African continent continue to threaten millions with starvation.

Director Scott G. Stevens

Nevertheless, unlike man’s inhumanity to man, which frequently sows the seeds of further division and the desire for recrimination, natural disaster may bring some measure of healing. In the face of a natural fury that shows no favoritism, humanity seems to gain, if only for a moment, a collective realization that all men are brothers. Shakespeare said it best: “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”

And so it was that over 100 nations sent medicine, food and tens of thousands of relief workers to tsunami victims -– an outreach of support on nearly as a grand a scale as the devastation itself. As hungry, homeless Pakistanis faced bitter cold nights, they were warmed by blankets and tents from nations many thousands of kilometers away and fed by a neighbor, India, once counted as an enemy. And when hurricanes brought the strongest nation on earth to its knees, a grateful America welcomed planes bearing emergency supplies from dozens of countries, including those long hostile toward the United States and its policies. Political condemnation had been supplanted with human compassion. And amid the racial and economic divide Katrina’s flooding exposed, the world was taught a lesson in reconciliation through the photograph of a 5-year-old African-American girl holding the hand of a 105-year-old, wheelchair-bound white woman as they evacuated New Orleans together.

George Washington Carver once wrote, “I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.”

Perhaps the message broadcast so forcefully in 2005 was that we are all part of one global family and that we must learn to hold each other tightly in our arms when we are buffeted by the storms.

I was taught this truth anew as I watched our ELI students from over 40 countries come together to donate to disaster victims. Often setting aside generations of national pride and prejudice to embrace those whom their elders had taught them to distrust, these amazing students seemed to recognize that, while they can never prevent natural disasters, they can at least inoculate each other against man-made devastation.

In these pages, the remarkable place we call ELI, which graduates hundreds of ambassadors for peace each season, chronicles a year’s worth of people and events. I hope you enjoy this newsletter, and may you be safe, well and thankful in the year to come.

Sincerely, Scott G. Stevens

P. S. This beautiful publication was made possible by the care and dedication of our marvelous newsletter committee: Wendy Bulkowski, Leslie Criston, Janet Louise and Russ Mason–led so ably by their chair and editor-inchief, Barbara Morris.