Date/Time
Date(s) - 01/18/2019
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
Location
Viscount Suites Hotel
Categories
Children-in-need meet world-peace-maker. Imago Dei School students learn from the Rotary Peace Fellow, while the Army vet and world traveler learns that everyone has the capacity to build peace, and that peace becomes possible when people match theory with practice at the local level.
Mark Flanigan is currently serving as an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer with the Imago Dei Middle School in downtown Tucson. He is a two-time Rotary Peace Fellow, in Tokyo (2012) and Bangkok (2017). Mark graduated from Edinboro University in Pennsylvania, and was an infantry officer in the Army for more than four years. He then taught English in Mexico for a year before getting two Masters degrees, one in Public Policy from George Mason University and the other in Peace Studies from the International Christian University in Tokyo. Following his selection as a Presidential Management Fellow, Mark spent nearly four years working for the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C., another four years as an English teacher and trainer of teachers in Hirado and Nagasaki in Japan, and then another four years working for the International Christian University Foundation in New York City. Mark also volunteered for nearly a year in Bangladesh teaching at the Asian University for Women, he served as a UN intern in Switzerland, and he was a disaster relief volunteer in Japan following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Although Mark recalls the disaster work being extremely tough, both physically and mentally, he says it was the most significantly impactful thing he has ever done in his life. This diverse and well-established record of work, study and travel abroad has given Mark insight into different languages, regions, people, and cultures, and a deeper understanding of global affairs.