Education for Agape Love and Forgiveness

Mr. Jonathan Little, a Wisconsin Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame inductee, will present to us case studies of two people who have suffered grave injustices and have emerged to forgive and love deeply.

Ms. Jiahe Wang Xu will give us the details of the agape love and forgiveness education research in Israel, Northern Ireland, and Taiwan funded by the John Templeton Foundation.

Ms. Hannah Rapp will share with us the accumulated evidence for the effectiveness of forgiveness education across a wide variety of world zones.

Four teachers from across the world zones of Israel, Northern Ireland, and Taiwan will share specific details of their educational efforts on agape love and forgiveness with their fifth grade (Primary 7 in Northern Ireland) students. These talks will provide audience members with specific examples of how they can help children understand and appreciate the moral virtues of agape love and forgiveness.

Dr. Robert Enright, who published the first empirical study on person-to-person forgiveness, will help us understand the deep meanings of both agape and forgiveness. He will lead us on a guided private reflection to help us, personally, to apply both agape love and forgiveness in our own lives. He wraps up the conference with a challenge to us all to bring agape and forgiveness back home into our families and communities.

Dr. Suzanne Freedman, professor at the University of Northern Iowa, will share with us an intensive 30-day forgiveness intervention for at-risk youth.

Dr. Judith Aldaba, a superintendent of schools, will share with us how she was able to roll out forgiveness education on a large-scale level across the metropolitan area of the Philippines.

Dr. Paul Coleman, renowned for his forgiveness intervention work, will discuss forgiveness in the context of family conflict.

Mr. Sylvester Jackson, Circles of Support Milwaukee, Wisconsin, will share his poignant story of moving from abuse suffered in childhood to crime and imprisonment to being set free through forgiveness therapy.