SBY no show at Quest for Global Healing conference

Nobel Peace Prize Laureates Desmond Tutu and Betty Williams provided inspiring words as 650 distinguished international figures gathered here to seek a better tomorrow in the second Quest for Global Healing conference.

Thursday’s opening session, originally scheduled to be opened by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who is still on a Middle East trip, was enlivened by Tutu and Williams relating their experiences in striving for peace.

“We are here to make a change in our world. We try to find solutions together,” the former Archbishop of South Africa told the gathering at the ARMA center.

People did not have to be extraordinary to try to change the current conditions, added Tutu, who was a leading critic of apartheid.

“All the things that I and everybody in the world have done for the betterment of people and the world first stemmed from small and ordinary action. It is God that wants you to do that.”

When his country finally became a democracy after many years of apartheid in 1994, Tutu headed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The widely admired panel granted amnesty to human rights violators who confessed their deeds, and set a global model for other countries trying to come to terms with legacies of political violence.

Williams was a corecipient of the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to bring communities together in Northern Ireland.

The five-day conference, which bears the theme Inspiring Actions for World Renewal, brings together world leaders, award-winning authors, business executives, nonprofit organization directors, social activists, innovative thinkers and global citizens, who are all concerned about where the world is heading, and how they can play a stronger role in making it a better place.

The opening ceremony was highlighted by a stunning Balinese classical dance and contemporary dance show by Nyoman Sura, entitled Peace for the World, on the museum’s open stage.

The conference is focused on inspiring and supporting those around the world who are concerned with such global challenges as extreme poverty, human rights and social justice abuses and the environment, and who want to be engaged in solutions.

The world media often ignores the concerns and commitments that individuals are willing to make to bring about the changes desperately needed throughout the world, said Wilford Welch, co-director of Quest of Global Healing Foundation.

Marcia Jaffe, conference founder and co-director of the foundation, said it was unfortunate Yudhoyono could not attend the opening.

“The President should be here to convince all distinguished scholars and innovators here, who come mostly from the United States and other Western countries, that Indonesia is a safe and beautiful country,” she said, adding she expected he would come for the closing ceremony.

She was encouraged that many scholars ignored travel warnings for Indonesia.

“The people attending have been at the top of their professions, and now have the time and resources to commit to a larger vision of change for the world. This is not a conference to make people sit and think but to create real actions through their activities,” Jaffe said.

There also are more than 75 young people attending, mostly through scholarships that were raised by the conference organizers.

“We felt strongly that a global gathering of this magnitude must be completely intergenerational or we would be missing the point”, she says. “Youth are our future, and dialogue and discussion must incorporate all voices.”

The gathering will offer major dialog and clear action steps to this multigenerational and multicultural audience. Workshops and other activities will provide clarity and directions in moving ahead with personal initiatives that can impact the world.