Linked with Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom WILPF, and with the Hague Appeal for Peace HAP.
She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.
Betty Burkes (born 1943) is a lifelong educator and activist, working for a world where all human beings are celebrated for their brilliance and beauty, where people recognize their interconnectedness, where the earth is respected, and justice prevails. She has taught these principles in her Montessori preschool, brought them to the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (as President, US section, and longtime board member), and used them in peace education in Albania, Cambodia, Niger, and Peru with the Hague Appeal for Peace/UN Department of Disarmament Affairs … (1000peacewomen 1/2).
She says: « We will succeed in building a strong base for transforming the politics of power when together we weave a vision that in practice offers a way of life so alive it is impossible to resist ».
Betty Burkes is the Rethink Curriculum Coordinator and leader of the Elders Circle that provides wisdom and guidance … (full text).
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Betty Burkes – USA
She works for Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom WILPF, for the Hague Appeal for Peace HAP, and for the Cambridge Peace Commission.
Listen her video: Women’s Int’l League for Peace & Freedom, Betty Burkes, 9.35 min, 10 min – Feb 12, 2007.
Betty Burkes was born in Malvern, Ohio in 1943. She is African-American, descended from enslaved people and raised by working-class parents and loving grandmothers in the U.S. Midwest. While Betty and her family experienced the racism of exclusion endemic to small American towns in the 1940s and 1950s, her father was a symbol of respect within the community and an oasis for students of color, particularly international students from Africa. Grounded in love and high expectations from her family, Betty attended Ohio State University.
After college, she joined the Peace Corps and worked in Ethiopia as a teacher. She also taught in public schools in California and private schools in England. She founded the Montessori Paradise pre-school on Cape Cod, Massachusetts and directed it for 12 years, offering young children an enriching learning environment where peace-making and social justice mingled with the affirmation of childhood. Betty also co-founded and ran a Summer Arts and Music program on Cape Cod. She is a Trainer and Founding Member of « Transition for the 21st Century, » an association of professionals who design and conduct workshops for groups relating to issues of oppression.