First report from Peace Fellow Kiran Sirah

Dear All, 
 
As required and with my sincere pleasure, i am sending you all, my First Rotary Report.
 
I understand that this report is a requirement of all Rotary Peace Fellows, two months into our fellowship.
However, I have also taken this opportunity to not only report back to you all, my activities and general impressions. I have also included a detailed report from a recent American Folklore conference that i attended in Bloomington, Indiana. The opportunity to attend this conference, not only enabled me to bring together my disciplines of Conflict Resolution and Folklore under a conference theme of War, Peace and Folklore. It also enabled me to bring about greater awareness, within a new sector, the work of The Rotary's foundation in Peace and Conflict resolution, and the Peace fellowship program itself.
Feedback from the American Folklore Society President himself, my professors, was that i made some important contributions to this conference, by being able to forge my own experiences of my work in Scotland. In particular, the way in which museums, the arts and the culture sector work towards notions of socially inclusive societies.
As a result i have an opportunity now to present at next year's conference, in New Orleans. As well as having a greater understanding for my own discipline,here in America.
As the first Rotary Peace fellow to undertake a Folklore studies as an approach. I am now moving progressively towards my research ideas  exploring ideas around Folklore, social justice and activism, anti war movements. Friends i made at the conference included Rory Turner and Edith Turner, the son and wife of the late great Anthropologist Victor Turner ( originally form Glasgow). As a result we have been in touch since, and i have a number of contacts established, as well as many that work within the folkore public sector.
I have also been active in exploring options towards Internship experiences for May next year having now made contact with a number of professors here at UNC with projects taking place in Peru and Venezuela.However i will also be ultizing some of my own contacts and looking further into current work through WITO and UNESCO, that specifically is working towards the protection of Intangible cultural Heritage. Which is a key topic right now, where i may be able to ultilize my folklore experience much more closely.
 
Ian/Harry, Please do pass on my best regards to the new 1020 District Governor, The Rotary club of Tranent, and i hope this report will be able to be circulated to members of 1020. Should there be any further information, questions or comments, please do not hesitate to contact me.
 
 
 
Kind Thanks
 
Kiran