The Olive Tree returns home...

Listen to kuci.org or KUCI Irvine 88.9FM Saturdays 12-1pm, or check out the podcast of the show if you want to hear the discussions this week.

This week's dinner supplements pithy around the Olive Tree Initiative (OTI), an organization for students and faculty started at UCI and now spreading to other campuses. At the end of September, OTI traveled to the Israel-Palestine region to meet with several religious and political leaders, journalists and citizens to gain a wider perspective on the long-winded, tortuous conflict that has demonstrated its effects in the US as well.

The UCI undergraduates, graduate students and faculty who attended the trip ranged from those of Israeli or Palestinian descent to interested, more self-proclaimed "neutral" students and even foreign-exchange students from Korea and India. The concrete exploration into a war-torn area attracted each person in a different way, yet, as a result of the groups collaboration and time together, all have come to a deeper understanding of the conflict and desire peace. Though none of the students or faculty members claim to know how that peace or at least allaying of suffering and conflict in the region would occur, most feel that by understanding its complexity little by little will help to reach such goals.

This past Saturday, OTI members met with the redoubtable, yet currently controversial due to a rise in student fees, UC president, Mark Yudof, and UCI's chancellor, Michael Drake, to discuss the trip and expand its message to all of the UC campuses.

Please visit OTI's website to make donations for future trips and find out more about the most recent trip. As well, if you would like to attend a live conversation with the group members and organizers, attend the Appreciating Narratives discussion on October 13th at UCI's campus.

More Olive Tree Initiatives are getting started on other UC campuses, so keep a look out for ways to get involved. Also, if you would like to start an OTI on your campus so students from your school can do this type of trip, please visit the Center for Peacebuilding website, OTI's website or contact Professor Paula Garb at pgarb@uci.edu for more information. Also, listen to the free podcast of the pre-trip and post-trip shows at my podcast site to hear the voices of OTI.