The Gandhi ‘Voyage of Dialogue and Discovery’, began last week in Jakarta, Indonesia. The journey will take Professor Gandhi, President of IofC International, his wife Usha, and teams accompanying them to countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle-East, Europe and the Americas, in his words, ‘with a hope for honest dialogue and a desire for collaboration’. Rob Lancaster from Canberra, Australia, reports:

The seventh First Step of Change (FSC) Camp was held in Korea with the theme of “Encounter” from 30 January to 5 February, 2010. News of this event is taken from the March 2010 Action for Life newsletter.

The second annual Tools for Change KL took place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, March 2010, organised by PICCSO (Performance Improvement Centre for Civil Society Organisations), a programme branch of IofC Malaysia. The 80 attending came from NGOs and IofC teams in Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia, and individuals from countries as far apart as China, America and Australia.

The Times' website, under its faith section, reports yesterday's latest launch of Michael Henderson's book No Enemy to Conquer at a Greencoat Forum in the London centre of Initiatives of Change. Under the headline 'Forgiveness is the key to bringing peace in Northern Ireland', Cheryl Gallagher reports Henderson's emphasis that 'forgiveness far from being just a personal or religious matter can affect the life of nations'.

The local press in South Australia recently picked up the community building potential of the Creators of Peace Circles. The following article from the Messenger Press, was sent in by Jean and Bek Brown who, with other friends, are currently running a number of introductory gatherings around their city of Adelaide.

As news of an appalling two-hour massacre of men, women and children in Jos, Nigeria, on Sunday was reported around the world, the first item on Al Jazeera TV English news on March 9 was the killing in the Jos area, presented by Yvonne Ndege.  As part of that report, first Pastor James Wuye and then Imam Muhammed Ashafa (of the film The Imam and the Pastor) spoke to the camera for about 45 seconds each, giving their strong message of reconciliation from Jos.

Three generations joined the faculty of the recent Life Matters Course in Melbourne, Australia, 5-14 February.

Rajmohan Gandhi, President of Initiatives of Change International, and his wife Usha, spent six days in Sri Lanka in February – the first part of a six month ‘journey of discovery and dialogue’.

The organizers of the third annual Caux Forum for Human Security are currently building a conference assistant team to support this summer's conference, which will run from 9 – 16 July 2010.

"Hope in the Cities has provided a map for the future," says former Virginia governor Tim Kaine in his foreword to Trustbuilding: an honest conversation on race, reconciliation, and responsibility, by Rob Corcoran, which is published this month by University of Virginia Press.