March 8th – Eritrea: the Country, Culture, and Circumstance

by Adam Hendrickson

We are excited to bring you our third lecture in the Soft Landing Missoula Presents series! We will present “Eritrea: the Country, Culture, and Circumstance” on Wednesday, March 8, 2017, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. in the University Center Theater, located on the 3rd floor of the University Center on the University of Montana (UM) campus.

Sponsored by UM’s African-American Studies Program, UM’s Political Science Department, and Montana Model UN, this presentation will feature two distinguished speakers: Kimberly A. Maynard, Ph.D. and Solomon M. Gofie, Ph.D., (see bios below) and will be followed by a Q&A period. These two amazing speakers will talk about everything from location, demographics and geography, to why people are leaving Eritrea and how. They will also discuss how can we do a great job at welcoming our new neighbors by knowing a little bit more about their culture and customs! We are really excited for this one!

Please RSVP to our Facebook event page! And, as a helpful tip, we recommend arriving to the University Center Theater (third floor) early as we have filled the space to capacity in past lectures.

Download the poster for the event – PDF.

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Dr. Maynard’s journey has taken her from smoke jumping in Missoula to work in natural disasters and, ultimately, war zones. Her fieldwork includes 30 years as a practitioner in crisis management, conflict recovery, and peacebuilding. During 20 of these years, she worked in the Horn of Africa’s war-torn regions. She began by providing humanitarian assistance to refugees and displaced persons and then went on to study the drivers behind forced migration and the means to transition from crisis to peace and renewal. Dr. Maynard holds a doctorate in International Affairs and has worked with the US Agency for International Development, the United Nations, the Red Cross, World Bank, and non-governmental organizations in conflict zones around the world. Dr. Maynard is currently UM’s Mansfield Fellow in International Affairs and works part time with USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives.

Dr. Gofie is Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. His areas of research include state, society and human rights, migration and transnational involvement in the Horn of Africa, conflict resolution, citizenship and political communities in the Horn of Africa; he has recently published scholarly articles and book chapters on these topics. Dr. Gofie is currently a visiting adjunct faculty at UM’s Department of Political Science, teaching courses on human rights and politics in Africa.

Refugee Resettlement

by Adam Hendrickson

The second lecture in our series took place on November 1st, 2016, from 6pm to 8pm in Urey Lecture Hall at the University of Montana Campus. Molly Short Carr from the International Rescue Committee and Mary Poole from Soft Landing Missoula spoke regarding the refugee resettlement process and how it pertains to Missoula. A personal experience was shared by Wilmot J. Collins, a Helena resident and former refugee from Liberia. The event was graciously sponsored by the University of Montana School of Journalism, and moderated by the Dean of the School of Journalism, Larry Abramson.

Missoula Community Access Television was present during the lecture, and a video copy of the event will be available through SLM. MCAT’s video is available on our website (below) as well as their website and will officially air on December 28, 2016 at 9pm. SLM successfully broadcasted the event in a trial run on facebook live, and intend to do so for future Soft Landing Missoula Presents lectures as well, with the hope of improving the quality of the video feed each time.

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Conflict, Poverty, and Identity in the Democratic Republic of Congo

by Adam Hendrickson


Dr. Paul Robinson and Molly Short-Carr. Photo generously provided by Ali Spoon Photography.

Dr. Paul Robinson and Molly Short-Carr. Photo generously provided by Ali Spoon Photography.

On September 20th, 2016, Dr. Paul Robinson and Molly Short-Carr spoke to a group of over 300 people at the University Center Theater on the University of Montana campus about the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The Event was sponsored by the UM Department of Political Science, Montana Model UN, and Global Leadership Initiative.

It is education and it is awareness that you need to change things, and we don’t have a lot of time. – Dr. Paul Robinson

DR. PAUL ROBINSON

Paul was born in the Belgian Congo, a son of missionaries. As a boy he and his family fled from advancing Congolese rebel militias. He earned both an M.A. and Ph. D. from Northwestern University in African History. Paul then joined the faculty of St. Lawrence University, where for two decades he developed and led the university’s Kenya Semester Program. He also developed and led university initiatives in Africa and consulted on development programs addressing poverty and the HIV-AIDS crisis. In 1999, he joined the faculty of Wheaton College as director of the college’s Human Needs and Global Resources (HNGR) Program, where he served until his retirement in 2013. Paul became a founding member of the Congo Initiative and the Christian Bilingual University of Congo in 2003. He continues to be a founding member of CI’s General Assembly in Congo. 

MOLLY SHORT-CARR

Molly is the executive director of the newly established International Rescue Committee office in Missoula. A native of Buffalo, N.Y., Molly received a B.A. in political science and international relations from Canisius College in 2002 and an M.A. in organizational leadership from Medaille College in Buffalo in 2011. She will soon defend her Ph.D. dissertation in leadership and policy at Niagara University Graduate School. Molly has worked with refugees for almost 15 years. She was the executive director of Journey’s End, a mid-size non-profit serving refugees and Western New York, between 2008 and 2014. That year she moved to Nairobi, Kenya, to work for Church World Service, first as cultural orientation coordinator, facilitating the implementation of an English as a Second Language program in Rwanda and Tanzania. She then became deputy director of CWS, overseeing the human resources, finance, property, procurement, travel logistics, and information technology units. She has been with the IRC since July.

Dr. Paul Robinson’s Lecture Slides in Video Format