Speakers

Seven Essex residents are taking on a big challenge - a run from the Massachusetts Boarder to the Canadian Boarder over two days in August.  The group includes: Seth Jensen, Dan Davis, Eric Langevin, Jeff Weston, Dylan McNamara, Brendan Kinney, and Derek Martisu.  

Thanks to Beth Cobb for arranging for Duncan's talk.

Below are excerpts from an Essex Reporter story that describes their effort to raise funds for the Vermont Food Bank by seeking sponsors for the run.   You can read the full story here.  The story was written by Mike Nosek and published on July 19.  

Story from Essex Reporter - July 19 - by Mike Nosek

A group of running enthusiasts from Essex have been competing together in an annual summertime race for the last five years. Like most other events around the country, that race will not happen in 2020.

Instead of being distraught all summer about the cancellation, the group of seven decided to do something about it to get somewhat of a sense of continuing their tradition, train, and compete again during the month of August. Only they won’t be competing against other teams of runners like usual -- but, instead, themselves.

The group of Essex residents have formed their own Miles for Meals Challenge to help raise money for the Vermont Foodbank. Over the last five years, variations of the group have participated in the 100 on 100 Relay -- a race that spans 100 miles along VT Route 100 from Stowe to Ludlow. Runners take turns with different sections of the course -- or “legs” -- and combine to finish in a time anywhere between 11-18 hours.

This year, the plans are different.  The group will start in Pownal, Vt. at the Massachusetts border around 7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 14 and finish at the Canadian border in Highgate the night of the 15th. The course will mostly be on less-busy roads that parallel to US Route 7 -- except for a necessary detour through Essex.

The teams expects to run east along VT Route 15 into Essex and through the Five Corners around 3:45 p.m. Saturday afternoon. The runners hope to maintain a pace of 8 minutes per mile -- putting them on the edge of Canada alongside Highgate State Park around 10:15 p.m. Saturday evening. 

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Dr. Peter Mires is a longtime friend of Pat Spielman.  He will join us via Zoom from Nevada to share his Vermont experiences. 

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In November 2016, Emily Gould shared her work in Rwanda at a weekly Essex Rotary lunch.  In the spring of 2020, she was awared the District 7850 Donald McCrae Peace Award by outgoing District Governor Richard Fox.  She has agreed to up date us on her work in Rwanda, with reference to the 1990-1994 Civil War that turned into a genocide of Tutsi people.  You can read a history of the Rwanda Civil War on Wikipedia, here.

Statement from Emily Gould's webpage:

Although I have been fortunate to work in Europe, East and West Africa as well as Central Asia, the heart of my international work is in Rwanda.

As Co-director of African Peace Partners, I have been supporting community-based mediation and peacebuilding through a partnership with a local Rwandan NGO, Community Based Organization of Peace Education (CBOPE)-Ihumure. This project began at first with Mediators Beyond Borders and then became the mission of African Peace Partners, a U.S. non-profit. CBOPE-Ihumure now operates a peace center that offers an integrated approach to peacebuilding by weaving together programing in trauma recovery, conflict transformation and cooperative economic activity. While the center now operates for service delivery, we hope it will become the first in-country training resource for trauma informed mediation.

Also, through African Peace Partners, and with funding from the JAMS Foundation, I have been a consultant to the Rwandan Supreme Court on a law reform initiative to expand both mediation and restorative justice in Rwanda. In this context, drawing on my experience as a criminal prosecutor, mediator, and peacebuilder in Rwanda that I have had the opportunity to deepen my understanding of trauma recovery and the principles of trauma-informed practice and systems.

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