It is my hope that the presence of so many religious sisters and other women at the transitional justice conference signals a new direction to peace-building initiatives. Society can no longer neglect the feminine principles in this all-important aspect of our lives on this planet: a peaceful coexistence. The way forward in peace-building in Africa rests on a change of mentality, a change of mentality seeded in the African system of values, particularly the traditional process for restorative justice.

Three Stats and a Map - Ebola is about more than just healthcare. As Melanie Lidman, Global Sisters Report’s Africa and Middle East correspondent, reported earlier this month, when an epidemic meets an already fragile social infrastructures, the reverberations are felt on multiple levels. One perhaps surprising example of this is the effect Ebola has had on the world’s chocolate industry.

GSR Today - We share the story of Sr. Ann Kelly and two other Missionary Sisters of the Holy Rosary who are using their education network in Liberia to educate people about how Ebola spreads. Where they are, the number of cases is currently dropping.

Financial education to help sisters “manage the little resources they have” on road to self-sufficiency - As American and European donations to Catholic organizations decline, congregations in Africa are trying to come up with creative ways to maintain the programs that provide essential services in rural areas, often beyond the reach of the government services. One innovative approach is securing education so that sisters can take charge of their finances, to help congregations become financially self-sufficient.

Sr. Judith Royer has had a 40-year career as a professor of theater and in February was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. She is also a St. Joseph sister and director of the CSJ Center for Reconciliation and Justice, established at Loyola Marymount University in 2012 to host forums on social justice topics and be a resource for education and reflective action.

Springbank Retreat Center for EcoSpirituality and the Arts in Kingstree, S.C., is part of religious communities’ mission in the U.S. and Ireland dedicated to teaching people about conservation, clean energy and respect for the natural world. In the Diocese of Charleston – the only diocese in the state, the center has had a presence by the Dominican Sisters of Adrian, Mich., since the 1980s, when Sr. Betty Condon became the center’s director. Its retreats and programs are run by a variety of women religious communities.

From A Nun's Life podcasts - Is it enough to try to please God, or does it not count unless I do it with joy? Listen to a discussion about our ability to discern God's will in this Random Nun Clip.

Climate change is all about air, about the atmosphere that sustains almost all life in our common home, Earth. We live within the world of air, “the sweet mothering air,” wrote Gerald Manley Hopkins. “Breathe in the living Jesus,” we recall the Easter message as we pray. Breathe within the received Spirit of hope.

GSR readers would never even consider dressing up as a "naughty nun," but every Halloween the marketplace and individuals come up with costumes that mock religious figures. Doing so traces back to medieval times, but the outcome is always hurtful, said Ken A. Grant, lecturer in history and religious studies at University of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg.

Recently I spent the night with the Sisters of Charity of St. Elizabeth at their convent in downtown Newark, N.J. They have offered me hospitality on several occasions when I have been coming or going to their retreat house, Maris Stella, on the Jersey shore some two hours away. Living just five minutes from the Newark airport, they are accustomed to visitors like me, in and out with barely time for conversation in the community room.