The Nurturing Hope San Antonio Partnership
The Nurturing Hope San Antonio Partnership is Named a San Antonio Peace Laureate
On March 01, 2026, the City of San Antonio and the San Antonio Peace Center held their annual “Blessing of the Peacemakers” ceremony on the campus of Northwest Vista College to celebrate the naming of the 2026 Peace Laureates. This year several organizations and individuals were recognized for their peace work, including Nurturing Hope San Antonio, which is a collaboration between three local colleges and universities and their local non-profit partners.
The Nurturing Hope collaborative is a large partnership which has provided inspiring peace education to students at the University of Texas at San Antonio, Trinity University, and Northwest Vista College. These three higher education institutions have been supported and sustained in these efforts by the Rotary Club of San Antonio and the H.E. Butt Foundation here in San Antonio, and by their international partners the Understanding Conflict Trust and the Corrymeela Community of Northern Ireland, and the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation in the Republic of Ireland.
Together these educational and civic institutions have created a high-impact peace and conflict studies program for our local college students. Meeting on the three campuses over the course of the year, cohorts of students gather to learn and discuss the theory and practice of civic engagement and civil discourse. These are much needed skills in an increasingly polarized society, and the students have been led through this process by Gina Amatangelo of the UTSA Honors College, Jenny Browne of Trinity University, and Migdalia Garcia of Northwest Vista College.
They have developed a city-wide program around the curriculum written by Derick Wilson and his partners in the Understanding Conflict Trust: Duncan Morrow , Jean Horstman, and Dong Jin Kim. The five-book series “Nurturing Hope” (2022) originated from the authors’ collective experience in peace and conflict resolution at the Corrymeela Reconciliation Centre in Northern Ireland. To further explore the work in its international context, students from the Nurturing Hope San Antonio program travel to Northern Ireland to participate in the “Summer Learning Journey” held annually at the peace center 50 miles north of Belfast.
The leader of the Corrymeela centre, the Rev. Dr. Alexander Wimberly, has welcomed and hosted these summer gatherings that are sponsored by the Understanding Conflict Trust for the students, the college faculty and staff, their community partners from the Rotary Club of San Antonio and the H.E. Butt Foundation, and for other participants from countries around the world, from South Africa to Lithuania and Uzbekistan to Colombia. In fact, educational sessions at the “Summer Learning Journey” having included joint presentations by North Koreans and South Koreans, and our students have been given tours of community centers in Belfast by former IRA & UVF combatants who now work together in a post-conflict Northern Ireland.
On March 01, 2026, the City of San Antonio and the San Antonio Peace Center held their annual “Blessing of the Peacemakers” ceremony on the campus of Northwest Vista College to celebrate the naming of the 2026 Peace Laureates. This year several organizations and individuals were recognized for their peace work, including Nurturing Hope San Antonio, which is a collaboration between three local colleges and universities and their local non-profit partners.
The Nurturing Hope collaborative is a large partnership which has provided inspiring peace education to students at the University of Texas at San Antonio, Trinity University, and Northwest Vista College. These three higher education institutions have been supported and sustained in these efforts by the Rotary Club of San Antonio and the H.E. Butt Foundation here in San Antonio, and by their international partners the Understanding Conflict Trust and the Corrymeela Community of Northern Ireland, and the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation in the Republic of Ireland.
Together these educational and civic institutions have created a high-impact peace and conflict studies program for our local college students. Meeting on the three campuses over the course of the year, cohorts of students gather to learn and discuss the theory and practice of civic engagement and civil discourse. These are much needed skills in an increasingly polarized society, and the students have been led through this process by Gina Amatangelo of the UTSA Honors College, Jenny Browne of Trinity University, and Migdalia Garcia of Northwest Vista College.
They have developed a city-wide program around the curriculum written by Derick Wilson and his partners in the Understanding Conflict Trust: Duncan Morrow , Jean Horstman, and Dong Jin Kim. The five-book series “Nurturing Hope” (2022) originated from the authors’ collective experience in peace and conflict resolution at the Corrymeela Reconciliation Centre in Northern Ireland. To further explore the work in its international context, students from the Nurturing Hope San Antonio program travel to Northern Ireland to participate in the “Summer Learning Journey” held annually at the peace center 50 miles north of Belfast.
The leader of the Corrymeela centre, the Rev. Dr. Alexander Wimberly, has welcomed and hosted these summer gatherings that are sponsored by the Understanding Conflict Trust for the students, the college faculty and staff, their community partners from the Rotary Club of San Antonio and the H.E. Butt Foundation, and for other participants from countries around the world, from South Africa to Lithuania and Uzbekistan to Colombia. In fact, educational sessions at the “Summer Learning Journey” having included joint presentations by North Koreans and South Koreans, and our students have been given tours of community centers in Belfast by former IRA & UVF combatants who now work together in a post-conflict Northern Ireland.
2026 City of San Antonio Peace Laureates
Fall 2025 Retreat for the Nurturing Hope Students @ Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas
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