GTU Voices - Knitting Back Our Community

Knitting Back Our Community

By GTU Communications

Gideon M. M’Imwonyo Mbui is a 2nd year doctoral student in the department of Theology and Ethics. His research interests and passions center around spearheading sustained theo-ethical engagements geared towards Ufanisi kwa wote (Swahili: A thriving/flourishing for all), through a constructive theological regime that deliberately takes into account the unique challenges and opportunities of the Kenyan/African context, and their attendant ramifications for the myriad issues of critical concern, on the global arena. Just as the GTU seeks to foster an atmosphere of healthy and respectful interreligious/faith dialogue/s through radical border-crossing and inclusion, Mbui envisions his overall project as both a catalyst and a model for positive, sustainable change by way of enhanced collaboration, than competition.

A foremost sphere of change-via-collaboration is in the harnessing and execution of our individual gifts and talents for the enhancing of the collective wellbeing of all—both near and a far off—including our non-human co-inhabitants of the Earthly home. For Mbui, through the selfless sharing of our stories and resources, each one’s unique gifts and talents included, we are then more likely to discover that the commonalities we share on account of our humanity far outweigh the perceived differences that every so often threaten to disintegrate socio-cultural, religio-political and economic fabric. 

This project draws inspiration from the story and stellar work of Professor Wangari Maathai, the late Kenyan environmentalist, feminist and social justice activist; she was the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Winner. As an Experiential Learning Fellowship ’20 recipient, my podcast series focuses on urging us each be an agent of positive change—a “hummingbird”—wherever we are; with whatever resources we’ve got. 

Through the selfless sharing of our stories and resources, each one’s unique gifts and talents included, we are then more likely to discover that the commonalities we share on account of our humanity far outweigh the perceived differences that every so often threaten to disintegrate socio-cultural, religio-political and economic fabric. 

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