Sami Awad is a teacher of non-violence, director of the Holy Land Trust in Bethlehem, Palestine. Sami comes from a Christian-Palestinian family from Jerusalem which was expelled from Jerusalem during the war in 1948. His uncle Mubarak Awad, a people?s leader in the spirit of Gandhi who lives in exile until today, became his role-model. As an adolescent Sami Awad engaged in the non-violent resistance of the first Intifada.

Several times he barely avoided being imprisoned, and in order not to go to prison he went to the US. There he studied peace research and conflict resolution. Back in Palestine he founded the Holy Land Trust in Bethlehem. With this organization he taught hundreds of groups and entire villages non-violent action, they also trained dozens of teachers in non-violence. He connects the teachings of Ghandi with those of Jesus and the non-violent traditions of the Palestinian society. In 2007, he stood for election as the mayor of Bethlehem.

More: www.holylandtrust.org

John Devaraj is wellknown beyond the borders of India as an artist and social activist with a big heart for street children. He founded the "Born Free Art School".

"We are committed to the idea to work in a creative way for world peace, for friendship and harmony and for the founding of communities where people are equal in a land that is called Gondwana."

His theater work with children has the main target to rise consciousness not by critic and blame but with the help of the inner images of fantasy.

During the Summer University he will train theater with the children and on August 6th, the Hiroshima Day, he will perform with them the musical "White Flowers".

Dr. Dieter Duhm, born in 1942, is psychoanalyst and sociologist and author of several books, among others, "The Sacred Matrix" and the left bestseller "Fear in Capitalism". In the German student movement of 1968, he was one of the main figures in the so-called ?emancipation debate? concerning the connection between political work and personal liberation. In spite of several offers to become a professor, Duhm left the university and his political work and became the initiator of the "Plan of Peace Research Villages and Healing Biotopes". Today, he prepares a centre for art and healing and has started to build up a global cooperative for a future without war.

More: www.dieter-duhm.de

The Jesuit Padre Javier Giraldo, Bogotà, is a human rights activist. He has helped founding the Peace Community San José de Apartadó and protected and accompanied them from the beginning. He also contributes in creating the Farmers´ University of Resistance, an education initiative of peace villages and non-violent groups all over Colombia. In spite of many personal death threads he has received he has been working for peace and justice for the poorest in his country.

More about Padre Javier

Vera Kleinhammes is one of the co-founders of the Peace Research Village Association. She is a graduate of the Peace School Mirja, Portugal and has been involved in peace work in crisis areas since she was 17 years old. Vera's focus lies strongly in developing educative models that support the principle of research and knowledge production in all aspects of peace work. She designs and leads workshops and courses within community settings, develops curriculums for encompassing peace studies, and study packs for youth and children.

Physicist, Leader of the solar technology company Sunvention, Loerrach, Germany Juergen Kleinwaechter, physicist and inventor from Loerrach/Germany, has developed a variety of solar systems and components which he assembled to form an integral, multi-functional overall system ? the ?Solar Power Village?. This system, a symbiosis for plant growth and solar energy production, is designed in such a way that it can be constructed almost entirely in the user-countries.

She is born in 1954, author, freelance theologian, peace activist and nominee for ?1000 women for the Nobel Peace Prize 2005?. Her spectrum of knowledge and activity comprises: international peace work, cooperation with the Plan of the Healing Biotopes, community knowledge, spiritual research, a new female consciousness, reconciliation between the genders, truth in love and eros. With her comprehensive knowledge and her radical commitment she is an ambassador for a global perspective for peace. She is founder of the GRACE Foundation for the humanization of money.

Both during and after completing his degree in choreography, composition and performing arts, Benjamin was active in a number of social/political organisations whose aim was to contribute to a culture of peace. This included co-founding the Peace University, Berlin and Potsdam. Throughout this working period he increasingly realised that to bring about a culture of peace that is profoundly effective and sustainable the human and social issues between people and colleagues must become the core issue. In 1998 Benjamin joined the Peace School Mirja, Portugal to go into an intensive study on the social issues. He became vice-director of the Institute for Global Peace Work in 2002 and supported the build up of a strong international network and political office. As well as this he began focussing on Israel and Palestine and developing the idea of the Peace Research Village project in 2000. As a direct descendent of the Mendelssohn family, Benjamin works closely with the background of a German-Jewish identity and was therefore highly motivated to support innovative new peace initiatives in this Holy Land. In 2005 he founded and became director of the Peace Research Village Association. 
Photo by Nigel Dickinson

A group of Palestinians, Israelis and Internationals has formed to explore the possibilities of a Peace Research Village in the Middle East. They have participated in the community training and peace studies of Tamera for more than a year. Among others:

Aida Shibli (Palestine): A peace activist since the first intifada who protested against the occupation and worked to empower Palestinian women. After years of political activism she saw the essential need to campaign inner peace work and spirituality and to find the parallel lines between social suppression and political suppression. Together with her 8 year old daughter she is living in Tamera.

Uri Ayalon (Israel): As a journalist, pacifist, anarchist and non-violent activist against the politics of the Israeli government for many years he came to the conclusion that in order to really make a change it is not enough to fight the system but to create a new life. Taking part in the Grace pilgrimages through his country he came in touch with the changing power of spirituality, prayer and awareness. He is a co-worker of Tamera and a member of the core group of the PRV team. 

Fernando Quiguanas is a young leader of the indigenous resistance movement in Colombia. Having grown up in the Nasa tribe, Colombia's biggest and most powerful indigenous tribe, Fernando has faced the cruelty of the civil war. His grandfather, a leader of the community, has taught him the tribal tradition and the knowledge of the connection to Mother Earth. His dream to liberate Mother Earth from possession and violence. In an interview he said: "I as a young person who has contact to the youth from the cities as well, know that a change is needed. We confront a massive wall. We as Nasa people must follow the way of the elders. Every young person´s life has its own unique sense. Resistance is our way of life. The resistance will exist until the sun will go out, for the spirits of the day and the night are with us."

Located in one of the most violent areas of the world, the village of San José de Apartadó radically took a stand for peace in its commitment to being a village of non-violence, where no weapons are allowed. In 2007 the peace village received the Aachen Peace Award and was also nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Starhawk is a well known teacher in the modern earth-based spirituality, non-violent action and Permaculture. She is a veteran of the global peace movement, bringing the techniques and creative power of spirituality to political activism. She is a co-founder of ?Reclaiming?, an activist branch of modern Pagan religion, and the author of ten books, including The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess, long considered the essential text for the Neo-Pagan movement and the now-classic ecotopian novel The Fifth Sacred Thing.

Starhawk is based in San Francisco and travel and take part in protest for peace and justice and in many different initiatives of building alternatives.

More: www.starhawk.org

He was born in Tibet and fleet the country when he was five years old. At 16, he became a monk in the private monastery of the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala. For 11 years he studied Buddhism and became a lama, a teacher of the Dharma. In 1981, he visited Spain for the first time as a translator and in 1994, he inaugurated the "Casa del Tibet", a Tibetan cultural center in Barcelona he has led since.

Thubten Wangchen has a clear political voice and is one of the most important figures of the Tibetan exile community in Europe. After his visit in Tamera, he will a host a conference with the Dalai Lama in Geneva, Switzerland.

More: http://casadeltibetbcn.org

Soname Yangchen, born 1973 in Tibet in the middle of the cultural revolution, daughter of a former monk, gave witness to the cruelty of the Chinese occupation when she was a child. In the age of 16 risked death in a freedom trek across the Himalayas, finally arriving in Dharamsala, home in exile of the Dalai Lama. Later she moved on to Europe where she became a wellknown singer of old Tibetan songs and wrote the bestselling book "Child of Tibet".