Twenty-five years ago, when Sarge and Eunice Shriver inaugurated the new Shriver Center at UMBC, they charged the community to connect scholarship, service, and reflection to engage and collaborate with communities in Baltimore City. At the time, Ernest Boyer, a leading visionary in higher education, called the newly inaugurated center a prototype for a  “New American College,” where the university’s people and resources would be focused on a public service mission within its urban setting…to take up the citizen call to connect learning and higher education with social change and development.

The Shriver Center meets that challenge in a number of ways, including the Shriver Peaceworker Program, which since 1993 has “realized the potential impact of Peace Corps Volunteers returning home ready to apply the lessons and experience they had gained abroad.” Through this work, the program has supported nearly 190 Fellows representing over 60 countries of Peace Corps service (from Albania to Zimbabwe and dozens in between), as well as served with scores of local community partners. Their commitment in East Baltimore alone has supported a myriad of programs and organizations such as inclusive programming in Patterson Park; bringing Spanish bilingual services and outreach to numerous organizations in the area’s diverse surrounding communities; coordinating environmental education programming; organizing communities and local projects, and serving youth in local schools to provide college access and increase family engagement.  

This fall more than a hundred Shriver Peaceworker alumni living locally and around the world reunited in Baltimore to celebrate their first reunion with a weekend filled with festivities, reflection, and service, including trash clean-up at Gwynns Falls/Leakin Park.

The next 25 years of Peaceworkers

The weekend closed with alumni reflecting on the challenges of continuing to engage in authentic dialogue across diverse perspectives and lines of division. It’s the community created by this shared and ongoing commitment to service and peace that makes the program’s bonds so strong and enduring.  

We’re proud and inspired by the lives of service and social change our alumni are leading.  Nearly half have stayed on in our Baltimore region and the other half are engaged around the country and across the globe. And all are committed to living their values and making a positive difference in their communities and beyond. Peaceworker alums are teachers, program leaders, policy analysts and advocates, social workers, community organizers, public servants at all levels of government, higher education staff and faculty, and more.     

We had a wonderful reunion celebration…Now we are looking forward to keeping that energy moving forward into the next 25 years!  In one of Sarge’s (Sargent Shriver’s) late public speeches in 2004, he continued to challenge us all to hold on to social hope and keep at the work of peacebuilding and positive social change, saying:  “All of history’s great changes — nonviolent changes — came from below, not from above. It comes from us, and often from the least of us. From my own life I can tell you. It’s not what you get out of life. It’s what you give to others in life which truly enriches your own life.”

– Joby Taylor, Ph.D. ’05, language, literacy & culture
Director, Shriver Peaceworker Program

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE!

Stoop Stories:

Telling Your Research Story

A Saturday Workshop

Presented by Laura Wexler of The Stoop Storytelling Series

Photo collage developed from individual images that are the property of the Stoop Stories Series website.

When: Saturday, January 26, 2019

Time: 09:00 AM – 02:00 PM

Location: University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), Sherman Hall Building, 1st Floor – SHER 003.

Driving directions: UMBC 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 Administration Drive Garage.

Parking: Parking is FREE on the weekend, please use the visitor spaces on
upper Admin Drive Garage or Hilltop Circle parking spaces A & D.  Do not pay for the visitor spaces, no permit is required.

Walking from Administration Drive Garage directions: Sherman Building at UMBC.

Registration:

• Attendees who are part of the UMBC community: Please click the “Going” button on https://my3.my.umbc.edu/groups/promise/events/66394.
• Attendees outside the UMBC community: Please email promisestaff@gmail.com with Subject line: “Stoop Stories – Registration” and the following details in the content of your email: Name, Department, University.

This workshop in a nutshell:

In this lively and informative workshop, you will learn how to harness the power of true, personal storytelling to create an engaging and accessible story about your research focus, project, or goals. Workshop includes lecture, discussion, and a chance for everyone to share a 3-5 minute story and receive feedback.

To prepare for the workshop, please listen to these Stoop stories:

• Sonia Sarkar. Listen here.
• Richard Huganir. Listen here.
• Janet Stephens. Listen here.

Please bring paper, pen, and a willingness to experiment, with you to the workshop.

Workshop Mission

Participants will learn to use the tools of true, personal storytelling to create and share an engaging and accessible story about their research focus, project, or goals.

Workshop Outcomes

Participants will:

• enhance their understanding of true, personal storytelling as a powerful tool of communication to engage and connect with a variety of audiences, and explain complex issues in an accessible and relatable way.
• improve their ability to identify and enact the principles of powerful true, personal storytelling.
• create a 3- to 5-minute engaging true, personal tale that illuminates their research focus and findings.
• share that personal research tale with a group of peers and receive feedback.

Workshop Structure

09:00 AM – 10:00 AM – Registration and breakfast

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM – Lecture

Break

11:15 AM – 12:15 PM – 3-5 people tell 3-5-minute stories and get feedback in front of entire group

12:15 PM – 01:30 PM – Breakout into groups of 20 people to share stories. Eat box lunch in rooms.

01:30 PM – 02:00 PM – Final reconvene and synthesize

Workshop Presenter

Laura Wexler is the co-founder and co-producer of The Stoop Storytelling Series, a popular cultural event and podcast in which “ordinary” people tell extraordinary true tales about their lives. Since 2006, Laura has presented workshops in true, personal storytelling for a range of organizations, businesses, and individuals. Her storytelling curriculum is based on 10 years of teaching memoir writing at the collegiate and graduate level, and her experience coaching nearly 2,000 people to tell the true, personal tales of their lives. In addition to her work with The Stoop, Laura is the author of the narrative nonfiction book, Fire in a Canebrake: The Last Mass Lynching in America (Scribner), as well as nonfiction published in The Washington Post Magazine, The New York Times, and elsewhere. She has developed a TV pilot for Amazon Studios, and is currently writing a narrative feature. She and her writing partner wrote and produced a Virtual Reality film that world premiered at Sundance Festival 2018.

• Laurawexler.com
• Stoopstorytelling.com

Laura Wexler’s photo and biographical information are the property Stoop Stories, and Johns Hopkins University, where Wexler is a member of the adjunct faculty.

Key Co-Sponsors: The Graduate School at UMBC, PROMISE: Maryland’s AGEP