The Campaign for Love & Forgiveness
WTVI is now in its fourth year of this national initiative and has already seen Beverly Dorn-Steele, director of education and outreach, attend campaign training at the Fetzer Institute, Kalamazoo, Michigan with other outreach coordinators and facilitators from select PBS stations. WTVI is one of only six PBS stations to have been awarded community-engagement grants to facilitate conversations around the topic of Love & Forgiveness.
Beverly Dorn-Steele, WTVI director of education
and
outreach services (bottom left), joins other
PBS
representatives awarded the Love and
Forgiveness Campaign grant.
WTVI kicked-off year four of the campaign by co-sponsoring “The Freedom in Creation” Art exhibit, held at Queens University in September, 2009. The exhibit displayed art and peace building efforts for child victims of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda. This program helps children see themselves as useful members of their community and find forgiveness for themselves and from others. Watch the video HERE.
Following a series of conversations, a youth group from C.N. Jenkins Memorial Church created a production titled “Love, Forgiveness and the Glory of Christ”, whereby students explored how love is extended as part of forgiveness. Written by the students, the skits addressed the aftermath of Darfur as well as the celebration of family. Watch the video HERE.
The Afro-American Cultural Center (AACC) joined with WTVI in the second year of the campaign. The AACC Roundtable Fellows held a production entitled “If the Red Bench Could Speak”. The production was designed to help facilitate continuing dialogue for the campaign that has a main focus of exploring how love and forgiveness can touch and impact the community.
The AACC Roundtable Fellows will participate in the campaign as Red Bench Ambassadors and will exhibit their art form, such as poetry, storytelling and dancing, to portray the power of love and forgiveness.
The symbol of the campaign is the Red Bench of Love and WTVI has partnered with various community organizations, including Mothers of Murdered Offspring (MOM-O). The group held a memorial service, at Charlotte’s Frazier Park, in honor of a female missionary slain at a Charlotte apartment complex. The station donated the use of its Red Bench for those in attendance to share a moment of understanding and forgiveness.
 
During a memorial service, the parents of Jin Joo Bryne (pictured on the left)
used WTVI’s Red Bench of Love to reflect on their daughter's life and to offer
forgiveness to the man convicted of taking her life.
The Campaign for Love & Forgiveness combines public television programming, community activities and events, and on-line discussions to encourage contemplation and conversation about how love and forgiveness can effect meaningful change in individuals and society.
The overall campaign is supported by three documentaries and the first year focused on love, with the airing of The Mystery of Love that explored love in marriage, family, and community. The next documentary was The Power of Forgiveness, which combined character-driven stories about the most dramatic transgressions imaginable with those that seem more commonplace. It also examined the role that forgiveness can play in alleviating anger and grief, and the physical, mental, and spiritual benefits that come with forgiveness.
Start or Join a Conversation
Do your daily conversations revolve around politics, family, work, television shows, music? What would it be like to talk with others interested in exploring experiences and expressions of love and forgiveness? What can we learn by sharing these closely held stories? Can we deepen and broaden our understanding of love and forgiveness and how it threads its way throughout all aspects of our lives, by examining these experiences with others? The Campaign for Love & Forgiveness can help you do just that.
Our partners
Stratford Richardson YMCA Youth Council
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library
Women Inter-Cultural Exchange
Community Building Initiative
Afro-American Cultural Center Roundtable Fellow Artists
Unity of Charlotte
United Religions Initiative
NEXXUS
C.N. Jenkins Memorial Church – Youth Group
University Of North Carolina, Charlotte
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Community Relations Committee
UNITY of Charlotte
Mail your personal "stories of love and forgiveness" to:
Beverly Dorn-Steele
WTVI
Director of Education and Outreach
Attn: Campaign for Love & Forgiveness
3242 Commonwealth Avenue
Charlotte, NC 28205
or E-mail them to:
bds@wtvi.org
Major funding provided by:
The Fetzer Institute
as part of The Campaign for Love & Forgiveness
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