Liz London, MS Student

In her junior year in college, Liz London had a semester abroad in Jerusalem. While she was there, conflict resolution and dialogue work took ahold of her as she heard stories and met people working on the ground. Once she got back to the U.S., Liz found work with Face to Face: Faith to Faith, an international program in conflict resolution for teens, bringing together youth from all over the world to do intensive workshops on a range of topics including faith, identity, and race among others. Liz’s work during this period gave her a lasting impression that this was an area that she could invest in the future.

When she lived in Chicago, Liz worked with young people, mostly high school students. It was evident during her time there that many youth are not given adequate resources and opportunities to resolve conflict constructively. Along with her passion for youth programming, Liz wanted to return to conflict resolution and fuse those interests together, so she applied to S-CAR.

Now, Liz will graduate in May and is grateful to S-CAR for the opportunity to learn about the intersections of conflict resolution and youth work, which has become incredibly relevant in her work. Liz currently serves as the Restorative Justice Program Manager at Washington Metropolitan High School in D.C., as part of Access Youth, a local nonprofit organization. In this role, Liz mediates conflict between students, allowing youths to have their voices heard and to see their choices and roles in moving toward accomplishing their goals.

The mediation leaves it up to the students to decide how they want to move forward from the conflict and how they can avoid the same situation in the future. Liz is happy in her current position and appreciative of the impact S-CAR has had on her learning and practice of conflict resolution, now a part of her work every day.