The aims of the "Values in World Thought" program are to develop our capacities of self-awareness and to support an ongoing inquiry into the values that inform our actions and our life purpose. We do this in order strengthen our ability to engage in positive and mutually beneficial relationships with each other and with our communities.

It is our intention to support the development of the citizens the world most needs now; those who can respond with creativity and care in these changing and challenging times, and those who can balance their own needs in relationship to the needs of others in the communities of which they are part

Eighteen students and five staff members from the “Values in World Thought” program will depart for South Africa on April 4th. The initial exciting cause of our learning journey is that we have been granted the opportunity to meet and speak with one of the great value carriers of our time, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. His life dedicated to easing the suffering in the world and his contribution to the emotional healing in post apartheid South Africa have few parallels in history.

Also, at the heart of our intention is to connect with and learn from a people and environment in a part of the world very distant from our community. In the spirit of Ubuntu we hope to discover more about ourselves through understanding our relationship to people of our world community whose ideas, philosophy and experience may be quite different from our own. We want to discover how we may be the same and find out how our differences might open us to new possibilities and ways of thinking about our lives.