Through two Fulbright scholarships at Queen’s University Belfast, Ireland, Jenny Browne, poet and professor of English, has traveled and worked in Northern Ireland. Now, with the help of fellow San Antonio professors and students, she’s bringing Ireland to Texas.
The Nurturing Hope Academy is based on the work of the Corrymeela community in Northern Ireland. Corrymeela is a conflict resolution center that welcomed people from opposing sides to have difficult conversations during the Troubles in Northern Ireland from 1968-1998.
According to their website, they have built networks based on trust and reconciliation. Today, they have programs and retreats where interested people are encouraged to have conversations with people from different backgrounds.
Through conversations between the Corrymeela community, the Rotary Club of San Antonio and local San Antonio universities, the Nurturing Hope Academy was born. Nurturing Hope’s purpose is to take Corrymeela’s communication strategies to have discussions about global issues at a localized level.
“Universities are feeling like difficult places to have open dialogue across differences. And so out of that, this Nurturing Hope Student Leadership Academy was built,” Browne said.
This is the pilot year for the Academy, and it connects college students from Trinity University, UTSA and the Alamo Community Colleges. The group meets multiple times a month to learn about the Corrymeela resources and each other. The work with this year’s cohort will end in February, with a poetry reading featuring Browne and guest poets Naomi Shihab Nye and Pádraig Ó Tuama. Afterward, every group from their respective universities will create an event at their campus that applies what they have learned in the Nurturing Hope Academy for the general public throughout the spring.
Through each meeting, students learn more about their peers’ challenges which will help them make their end of Academy projects in the spring. Azariah Anderson, senior English and political science double-major and Nurturing Hope participant, emphasized the importance of allyship.
“It has reminded me of love and intention and empathy,” Anderson said. “We have so much more in common than we have a difference, and it sounds cliche. People say it all the time, but allyship is the name of the game.”
Browne’s work in Northern Ireland hasn’t stopped with the Nurturing Hope initiative. This past summer, she piloted Writing in Place, the first Beyond the Classroom (BTC) course in Northern Ireland. Students traveled to Ireland during the summer, and the fall semester allowed students to unpack their study abroad experience.
BTC courses are shorter than other study abroad experiences, but there is still an immersive aspect. Andre Martinez, assistant director of study abroad, noted that with BTC classes, students have an opportunity to extend their study abroad experience through reflection.
“They had their experience, they had time to reflect over the semester, and then they can have discussions and then they could bring it full circle,” Martinez said. “This is really one of the best models that you could ever have. Whereas when summer students go abroad, and when the program is over, that’s it, they go home.”
Nurturing Hope and Browne’s course are not entirely different. Browne noted that the Nurturing Hope Academy and BTC course are connected thematically.
“In a lot of ways, the course is another version of this. You have to begin by knowing your own story, and then you have to open yourself up to being willing to really listen to someone else’s story,” Browne said.
