Merchants’ Chamber of Commerce & Industry organised a Special Session on Ethics and Business. The Chief Guest of the Special Session was Jerry White, Co-recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize, Executive Director, United Region Initiative, Senior Ashoka Fellow, Social Entrepreneur and Humanitarian Activist.
A landmine explosion while hiking in the Golan Heights in 1984, as an undergraduate studying abroad in Israel, took away Jerry’s leg. Twenty years old when the accident happened, Jerry spent the following year recuperating in Israel, learning how to walk again with an artificial leg. A fellow survivor who had lost his leg from a minefield explosion reached out to him and said, “The challenge is in your head and your heart, not your leg.” This set him not just on a journey of self-discovery, but on a dedicated path to help people in conflict-laden communities develop resilience.
Jerry went on to recall his childhood memories. He shared how he grew up as the fifth child in a Catholic family of six siblings. His family was a typical fourth generation Irish immigrant family. His dad was a businessman, but it was his mom who put him on the path of compassion. She always taught him to be concerned about the ones who were below in the ladder and not worry much about the ones a rung above. He shared how his mom would ask him to stay in touch with nature, an ethos he still believes in.
