The Kenneth and Viona Brown Peace Fund

Their home served as a classroom, strategy headquarters, and retreat for more than two generations of Manchester students. When Ken and Viona arrived at Manchester in 1961, they began hosting weekly meetings in their living room. There, discussions fueled by coffee and popcorn could spill from the late into the early hours.

Upon his retirement from full-time teaching in 2006, Ken reflected that his most meaningful work as an educator came through his January session courses. He certainly was committed. In a period of 35 years, from 1971 to 2006, there were only two years he didn’t load a group into a van (or onto a plane, or a boat, or a combination of all three) and go off to learn, together. He knew that the learning and opportunities for growth that come with such opportunities are immeasurable. Ken delighted in the journey: the way that we would leave campus an assortment of folks signed up for a course and, somehow, come back so changed. We returned not only having learned about Nicaragua – or Vietnam, or India, or Ireland. We returned with a better appreciation of this wondrous world, and understanding so much more about ourselves. It was Ken’s special variety of Peripatetic School.

In honor of this, we have established an endowment to promote experiential education opportunities in peace studies. The priority for these funds will be to support January session peace studies travel courses, and the transformative experiences Ken so cherished. If you’d like to contribute to the fund, information can be found at the bottom of this page.

Fifty years after those first living room gatherings, Viona continues to host Kenapocomoco Coalition meetings each week. If you happen to be in town some Monday night, come on over. The topicschange; the welcome doesn’t.

On the Road with Ken Brown
Do you have memories of one of these trips? Photos? Consider sending them to us at the Peace Studies Institute, or posting them to Ken’s facebook page (Kenneth L. Brown). Ken’s family so appreciates the stories you share.

1971 Communes in New England and Southeastern United States / Summer: India and Kashmir

1972 England

1973 England

1974 England

1975 Mexico

1976 England

1977 Colombia / Summer Japan Peace Walk

1978 Summer BVS orientation (MN,WI,IN)

1979 Cuba

1980 Communes in United States

1981 Cuba

1982 Mexico

1983 Bahamas / Summer: USSR, Sweden, Finland, Poland, G.D.R., Denmark

1984 Bahamas (January and May sessions)

1985 Summer: USSR, (Russia, Georgia, Armenia) Hungary, Czechoslovakia

1986 Nicaragua

1987 Nicaragua

1988 Nicaragua

1990 St. Croix, Virgin Islands

1991 Nicaragua van trip (Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, East Coast Pearl Lagoon)

1992 Martin Luther King Center, Atlanta, GA

1993 Brazil

1994 Cuba

1995 Haiti

1996 Rio Grande Valley, Monterrey TX-Mexican border study

1997 Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland, Scotland, London

1998 Vietnam and Thailand

1999 Mexico: Chiapas

2000 Civil Rights Movement Then and Now: U.S. South

2001 Jamaica

2003 India: Delhi, Agra, Gandhi ashram Wardha/Sevagram, Mumbai

2004 Cuba

2005 North Ireland

2006 Civil Rights Movement: U.S. South