Harold Saunders and Syngman Rhee, recipients of IofC's 2009 Trustbuilder Award (Photo: Karen Elliott Greisdorf)Dr. Harold Saunders, Director of International Affairs at the Kettering Foundation, and Dr. Syngman Rhee, International Chairman of the Institute for Strategic Reconciliation, are the 2009 recipients of the Initiatives of Change Trustbuilder Award.

Saunders served as a resource to three presidents as a member of the National Security Council senior staff. As Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs in the Carter Administration, he helped broker the Camp David Accords, a landmark achievement in peace for the Middle East. He is the architect of Sustained Dialogue, “a public peace process” designed to change relationships among those in deep-rooted human conflicts.

As chairman and president of the International Institute for Sustained Dialogue (IISD), Saunders conducted peace-making and peace-building dialogues during and following the civil war in Tajikistan, 1993-2007, as well as a three-year dialogue to improve relationships between the Muslim Arab heartland and the West. IISD continues to transfer Sustained Dialogue to the Institute for Democracy in South Africa, and is the institutional base for the Sustained Dialogue Campus Network, now operating on some 16 high schools and college campuses.

Saunders told participants at The Trust Factor forum in Richmond on June 6 that trustbuilding starts with the trustbuilder, "not with those who need trust built between them…Trustbuilding is all about relationships. This is a direct rebuttal to those political scientists who say it is all about power.” He described sustained dialogue as different from other change processes. “It focuses on relationships more than issues because most of the entrenched problems are rooted in dysfunctional relationships. And because relationships don’t change quickly we have laid out a process of sustained dialogue…IofC is a truly unique organization focusing precisely on what I believe is important: the transformation of relationships.”

"A bridge has to touch both sides." Syngman Rhee at Trust Factor forum (Photo: Karen Elliott-Greisdorf)

Dr. Syngman Rhee is Director of the Asian American Ministry and Mission Center at Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond, Virginia. He recently served as the first Asian moderator of the Presbyterian Church, USA and was also president of the National Council of Churches. Rhee was born and raised in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea. For many decades he has been deeply involved with issues of justice, reconciliation and peace. He was campus minister at University of Louisville where he served as the first faculty advisor to the Black Student Union, and joined the Civil Rights Movement. He has made more than 20 trips to the two Koreas since his first trip to North Korea in 1978 to help reconciliation efforts in the Korean peninsula.

“The basic struggle is what to do with the past,” said Rhee at the Trust Factor forum. “There have been atrocities and injustices. The forgiveness factor is basic if there is to be any sense of trustbuilding – maybe not forgetting, but intentional forgiveness is essential.

“When two sides are in conflict, what is the ground that those of us who try to be trustbuilders can stand on? They say: ‘My experience tells me that I should not trust that group or nation.’ The burden of the trustbuilder is to say: ‘Trust me.’ They say: ‘Who are you?’ But if we are going to survive as a people we have no choice but to think seriously about forgiving.

“I learned this conviction from Martin Luther King, Jr. As a newcomer to the USA I did not know much about racism. But I felt I needed to be part of the struggle. King’s conviction was that the civil rights movement was not just to liberate the oppressed but to liberate the oppressor too.

“A bridge has to touch both sides. People want us to be on their side. The message of the cross is to stretch out and hold both sides. Being a bridge means being willing to lie down to allow people to cross it. If I get up and claim, ‘I am the bridge’ then I am no longer a bridge. New history is made by people who are willing to touch both sides and to lie down.

“I am drawn to IofC because it is a movement that recognizes the importance of nurturing the roots and bearing the fruits of our faith. Roots and fruits cannot be separated in the work of peace and justice. Trustbuilding must be on a personal level and social level. Trustbuilding is costly. It requires steadfastness and willingness to be shot at from both sides."