Conference attendance only is free and open to the public. Lunch Cost: $5 SAU Students; $20 all other guests. Keynote Address Begins at 4:00 p.m.
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Conference Program
Ambrosians Working for Social Justice welcomes Joyful Clemantine Wamariya, humanitarian activist and best selling author, as the keynote speaker for the 20th annual AWSJ conference.
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The AWSJ 2023 Social Justice Conference will address the theme of "Radical Hospitality" and attend to the growing humanitarian crisis related to immigration and those seeking asylum from various places of harm. We will consider how to dismantle the barriers to belonging faced because of immigration status, recovery journey, or history of incarceration. Through workshops, presentations, and sharing together, we will ask how to practice radical hospitality as individuals, institutions, and communities, and seek out next steps to truly welcome the foreigner, the outcast, and the outsider, into our communities and lives.
Radical hospitality refers to an expansive and committed welcome to all regardless of background, beliefs, or circumstances, and particularly to those who face barriers to belonging. More than politeness, radical hospitality calls for a generous sharing of time, resources, and life together. It includes offering support without judgment and fostering relationships of deep connection. Radical hospitality involves collaboration to combat barriers to inclusion and the creation of paths to access and safety in support of true communal belonging.
The 2023 conference will conclude with Wamariya's keynote address, "How'd You Neighbor?" The keynote address will begin at 4:00 p.m.
CEUs are available through the School of Social Work.
About Joyful Clemantine Wamariya
Joyful Clemantine Wamariya is a social entrepreneur, an internationally renowned speaker, and a New York Times Bestselling Author. Her memoir The Girl Who Smiled Beads debuted with Crown Publishing in April 2018, and since has been published in seven languages. Joyful is currently the founder of 10Houses, a private network dedicated to cultivating entrepreneurship and equity, and THINGY, a digital platform that captures, organizes, and shares creative rituals.
Joyful lives to connect communities and transform individualist perspectives into balanced structures of exchange and interaction. She catalyzes development personally, locally, and globally by centering the mind, body and spirit as a site for personal and communal growth. Joyful provides practical emotional and mental strategies to rewire habits and make actionable decisions that serve equity in self, the home, the community and the workplace.
Informed by her personal experiences growing up in nine different countries, mostly in war torn regions across central and east Africa, Joyful emboldens communities to bring awareness to divisive labels and ideology embedded in oppressive identities based on class, race, and gender.
Fall Conference
Through a day of workshops and presentations, conference attendees will gain a deeper understanding of community organizing practices and develop tools to mobilize their skills, voices, and networks to seek justice and promote social change. Featuring keynote speaker Joyful Clemantine Wamariya for the Ambrosians Working for Social Justice Conference.
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