How do we lead from wholeness, even in the middle of brokenness? This is a question I’ve held throughout my 30 years as an international peacebuilder. My new book The Answers Are There: Building Peace from the Inside Out, published in October, tells the story of how I’ve been doing that in practice and, especially, in partnership with Fambul Tok in Sierra Leone.
We’re confronted on a daily basis with the ….Keep reading this post >
by Charles Gibbs and Amy Czajkowski
This is the third post of a four-part blog series exploring how to cultivate learning and design spaces for practitioners committed to community-centered peace and development. We understand such a space as one that invites knowledge, experience, wisdom and nuggets of insight from even the most painful experiences to address today’s questions and needs so we can create the new together. We are assuming that ….Keep reading this post >
Thank you for your leadership.
These words, spoken by a Kenyan woman peacebuilder, both gladdened and surprised me – gladdened because it’s always nice to have someone affirm a positive contribution they feel I’ve made; surprised because my focus had been on serving, not leading.
She spoke at the conclusion of a five-day retreat whose theme was Celebrating and Nurturing Women as Peacebuilders. Co-convened by Catalyst for Peace and Green String Network, ….Keep reading this post >
Up in the dark at 5:30 AM and prepared to depart by 6 AM on the 2+ hour drive to Mombasa where we were to have a meeting with about 20 women peacebuilders from the Mombasa/Coastal area. After spending a good deal of time bouncing our way north on an unpaved, rocky road with arid, rocky land that reminded me of Palestine/Israel stretching out to the east and west, we ….Keep reading this post >
Flying high over scattered clouds out toward the coast from Nairobi to Malindi, over mostly brittle brown lands bearing witness to the drought that has been visiting Kenya for some time. The dryness of the land stands in stark contrast to the living waters that flowed through our gatherings earlier today at the Green String Network office and the nearby Wasp and Sprout Café.
About 15 women and 4 men gathered ….Keep reading this post >
My colleague, Amy Potter Czajkowski, and I have journeyed to Kenya to learn more about the work of women peacebuilders in Kenya and to explore what Catalyst for Peace might be able to do to help invite and support women’s leadership in peacebuilding and development. After getting to bed at 1 AM this morning on the tail of a long, long journey from Washington, DC to Nairobi, Kenya, with a ….Keep reading this post >
We don’t see sustainable peace being led from the bottom-up, or from the top-down–but rather, from the inside-out.
Making visible the concentric circles of roles in the peacebuilding system, and the international aid system more generally, allows us to see the multiple points of action and impact, and the complete set of relationships, necessary for sustainable peace. Each level is important, and interconnected.
In our approach, we examine relationships between each level ….Keep reading this post >
In her article in the Building Peace Forum, CFP President Libby Hoffman shows how fostering community agency in peacebuilding as well as in national health crisis response (like the current Ebola crisis in West Africa) builds ‘social immunity’, leaving communities stronger for handling the next crisis:
Empowered, trusted local voices and leadership magnify the success of prevention efforts, and they do so while strengthening community capacity for the post-Ebola ….Keep reading this post >
The rural women of Sierra Leone suffered the most during the war. And now they are showing the world that they are so much more than victims ⎯ they are mighty peacebuilders, and mighty leaders. And they are healing their communities, and themselves, in their role as Fambul Tok Peace Mothers.
When the local people and communities most impacted by war are given the chance to lead in building the peace after ….Keep reading this post >
We have been interested in mobilizing religious resources for peace since our founding, and specifically in the process of truing to the highest and best of our faith commitments and translating them into practices and programs that help build peace in the world. We commit to that work individually and organizationally, and invite those we work with to do the same. We believe this process of ‘truing’ and ‘translating’ brings transformative ….Keep reading this post >
