FAIRFIELD—The Jesuit Universities Humanitarian Action Network (JUHAN) is excited to announce the Seventh Biennial JUHAN Student Leadership Conference, “Humanitarian Action and Climate Change,” to be held virtually on the evenings of Thursday, September 30 and Friday, October 1, and on the morning of Saturday, October 2.
In the years since its founding in 2006, JUHAN has found an administrative home at Fairfield University and our campus will convene the upcoming 2021 conference with the support and collaboration of colleagues from The College of the Holy Cross, Fordham University, University of Scranton, John Carroll University, and Loyola University Chicago. The virtual conference is expected to bring together students from across our Jesuit network of colleges and universities in the U.S.
Using the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to frame our discussions and with modules and facilitation provided through the youth-led, youth-serving sustainable development organization Foundations for Environmental Stewardship (FES), the Conference will include student skill-building modules, action planning sessions, and guest speakers on this seminal issue of our time and how it intersects with the field of humanitarian action.
We are thrilled to also announce that the Conference will include a special collaboration with the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, and Fr. Joshtrom Isaac Kureethadam SDB, coordinator of the “Ecology and Creation” sector, who has described the Laudato Si’ Action Platform as “a single global framework that unites our distinct experiences and perspectives under one umbrella, promoting local and sectoral initiatives to the fullest possible extent and developing each member of the human family to lead in his or her own way.”
The call to action is clear. In April, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Mark Lowcock noted, “Climate change is already one of the top drivers of humanitarian need and human suffering, alongside conflict and disease-both of which, by the way, are exacerbated by climate change.” Student who attend the upcoming conference will learn how to plan initiatives on their home campuses using Laudato Si’ and the forthcoming Seven-Year Plan as a framework for action.
If you are a faculty, staff or student at a Jesuit College, University or High School and would like to know more about the Conference and how you can get involved, please reach out to Julie Mughal, Associate Director, Center for Social Impact, Fairfield University – jmughal@fairfield.edu.
Fairfield University is a modern, Jesuit University, rooted in one of the world’s oldest intellectual and spiritual traditions. More than 5,000 undergraduate and graduate students from 36 states, 47 foreign countries, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico are enrolled in the University’s five schools. In the spirit of rigorous and sympathetic inquiry into all dimensions of human experience, Fairfield welcomes students from diverse backgrounds to share ideas and engage in open conversations. The University is located in the heart of a region where the future takes shape, on a stunning campus on the Connecticut coast just an hour from New York City.
