Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development

Discovering what goes right in the lives of youth

Forgiveness Project 

Update: Forgiveness Project

Lori Campbell ,

We are excited to share that this project was awarded funding by the “Self, Virtue, and Public Life” Initiative (University of Oklahoma funded by Templeton Religion Trust) and will officially begin in August 2019. The initiative aimed to bring together social scientists and philosophers to explore issues related to self and virtue development in the context of civic life. Dr. Jonathan Tirrell (developmental scientist) and Dr. Erin Kelly (philosopher) from Tufts University will be leading the project, along with Dr. Alistair Sim from Compassion International (CI) and Dr. Lionel McPherson from Tufts, to explore the role of forgiveness as a civic virtue in post-genocide Rwanda. We will build on the ongoing CI Study of Positive Youth Development (PYD) by conducting exemplar interviews and developing surveys probing ideas related to justice, moral repair, resilience, and forgiveness following community-wide injustice and atrocity.