Nurturing Hope

Overview

Nurturing Hope San Antonio is a partnership for educating San Antonio college students in peace and conflict studies. Students from UT San Antonio, Trinity University, and Northwest Vista College meet through the academic year to explore how trust and hope can be sustained in personal, community, and political life.

They come from different neighborhoods, backgrounds, and faith traditions. They work with the Nurturing Hope curriculum, practice civic engagement and civil discourse, and plan campus and community events on issues of local concern. Meetings rotate among the three campuses and community organizations.

This is the local program. It is not Seeds of Hope, the year-long academy in Northern Ireland, and it is not the Summer Learning Journey, the residential gathering at Corrymeela. Those are related, and distinct.

Rotary's role

The Rotary Club of San Antonio is a local sustaining partner of the fellowship, alongside the H.E. Butt Foundation. Rotarians Jack McGuire and James “JC” Clapsaddle helped develop the partnership with the three campuses and with international colleagues.

The club's work here is local and ongoing: supporting the campus cohorts, connecting students and faculty with community partners, and helping the program take root. The international trip is one extension of that work, not a substitute for it.

On 1 March 2026, at the Blessing of the Peacemakers on the Northwest Vista College campus, the City of San Antonio and the San Antonio Peace Center named the entire Nurturing Hope San Antonio collaborative a 2026 Peace Laureate. Jack McGuire and JC Clapsaddle were also named individually, with Derick Wilson and Rev. Dr. Alexander Wimberly, for their part in this partnership and related peace work.

The three campuses

Campus academic leads named by the partnership:

• Gina Amatangelo, UT San Antonio
• Jenny Browne, Trinity University
• Migdalia Garcia, Northwest Vista College / San Antonio Peace Center

UTSA describes the fellowship as the Nurturing Hope San Antonio Student Leadership Academy. Trinity describes a year-long student leadership academy in civic discourse. Northwest Vista’s Peace Center is part of the same collaboration.

Students who complete the local year may be invited into the international Summer Learning Journey at Corrymeela. That invitation is an extension of the fellowship, not the whole of it.

Partners

Education partners: Northwest Vista College (Alamo Colleges), Trinity University, and The University of Texas at San Antonio.

Local sustaining partners: Rotary Club of San Antonio and the H.E. Butt Foundation.

International partners: the Understanding Conflict Trust, the Corrymeela Community (Ballycastle, Northern Ireland), and the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation (Enniskerry, County Wicklow, Ireland).

The curriculum

The fellowship is built around Nurturing Hope (2022), a five-book learning resource by Derick Wilson, Duncan Morrow, J. Jean Horstman, and Dong Jin Kim, published by Corrymeela Press and available as an open-source resource.

The materials grew from peace and conflict work at Corrymeela and from learning partners in Northern Ireland, South Korea, and the United States. Dr. Wilson lived in San Antonio in academic year 2019–2020 as a US–UK Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at St. Philip’s College and Northwest Vista College; during that Fulbright he co-authored the materials that became the basis of this partnership.

The Understanding Conflict Trust holds the resource. More at nurturinghope.net.

How to take part

Students apply through their campus program, not through Rotary. Faculty and campus contacts are listed on Nurturing Hope San Antonio.

Rotarians who want to support the fellowship — as a sustaining partner, a Peace on Earth host, or a sponsor — should contact the club or Jack McGuire.

The Rotary Club of San Antonio Foundation is a 501(c)(3) organization, and donations are tax deductible.