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Showers of Recognition

by Libby Hoffman

Alongside New England’s record seasonal rainfalls, this spring and early summer have brought showers of recognition for The Answers Are There, with the book winning several major book awards. The Nautilus Awards, the Independent Book Publishers Association, the Nonfiction Authors Association, the Independent Publisher Book Awards, and Indie Excellence have all awarded it top honors, with several in more than one category. See below for more information on the individual awards.

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My New Book Braids Lessons From a Lifetime of Peacebuilding

by Libby Hoffman

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 >

Cultivating Learning and Design Spaces – Part 4

by Amy Czajkowski

by Amy Czajkowski and Charles Gibbs

This is the fourth and final 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 ….Keep reading this post >

Cultivating Learning and Design Spaces – Part 2

by Amy Czajkowski

by Amy Czajkowski and Charles Gibbs

This is the second 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 >

How to Cultivate Learning and Design Spaces – Part I

by Amy Czajkowski

by Amy Czajkowski and Charles Gibbs

An Overview and Invitation

At a time when people and systems seem overmatched by the size and urgency of the challenges we face, what worked for yesterday’s problems won’t solve today’s and won’t help us create the world we’d like to inhabit tomorrow. In the absence of a shared vision of a whole, healthy system with enlivened, mutually enriching partnerships at all levels, we teeter between ….Keep reading this post >

Sacred Opening in a Time of Pain and Possibility

by Charles Gibbs

Photo by Charles Gibbs

The call of this moment
and of all moments
is to seek the light
and to face the darkness
within and without
with unflinching honesty
and unswerving devotion
to journey at least a little each day
 toward enlightenment –
living in love,
fearless, joyous and free –
in service
to this glorious and wounded world.

As the coronavirus flows invisibly over the face of the Earth transforming life as we have known it and creating seemingly ….Keep reading this post >

As Our Work Grows, So Too Is Our Team

by Libby Hoffman

As our team continues to support the growth of a global community of learning and practice building peace from the inside out, we have also needed to grow our team. Beyond skillful administrative skills, we were looking for someone with experience and background in grassroots organizing, communications, and coalition building. Our new addition comes with that and more. He brings multi-cultural and multi-lingual resilience and spiritually-based formation that enriches our ….Keep reading this post >

In a time of closings, a Sacred Opening

by Libby Hoffman

Bruce Springsteen has a rousing rendition of the classic folk anthem “This Little Light of Mine” on his Live in Dublin album, which opens with Springsteen calling out to his keyboardist, “Charles, bring us home!” Charles Giodarno then jumps into play with a galvanizing rendition of the tune, setting the stage for The Boss, his band, and ultimately the whole audience to join in singing, dancing, and letting our light ….Keep reading this post >

CFP at UNGA Side Event

by Amy Czajkowski

Catalyst for Peace partnered with the Government of Sierra Leone and the International Peace Institute to hold a side event in September at the United Nations General Assembly entitled: An Agenda for the People by the People: Consolidating Peace and Advancing Development in Sierra Leone.

The event included a panel presentation that featured the National Framework for Inclusive Development and Local Governance. The Framework grew out of long-term work Fambul ….Keep reading this post >

(Some of) what we learned at Constellating Peace

by CFP

We’re thrilled to share the Event Report reflecting on so much of what we heard, saw, felt, and learned at Constellating Peace, our global gathering of learner-practitioners working in peacebuilding in ten different countries on four different continents.

We’ve collected the real-time reflections from the Event, as well as other resources from and for our time together, in an earlier blog post. In “Constellating Peace from the Inside Out,” we drew ….Keep reading this post >

Come learn more about the Wan Fambul Framework at the UNGA

by Amy Czajkowski

Catalyst for Peace and the Government of Sierra Leone are working with the International Peace Institute to offer a side event about the Wan Fambul National Framework for Inclusive Governance and Rural Development at the United Nations General Assembly this month.

“An Agenda for the People by the People: Consolidating Peace and Advancing Development in Sierra Leone” will be held on September 27 at 8am at IPI’s Trove Lie Center for Peace, Security ….Keep reading this post >

An Overview of Constellating Peace

by CFP

In April 2019, Catalyst for Peace brought 75 delegates from around the world to Sierra Leone for a week of dialogue, exchange, and embodied learning. Here are some of the highlights:

Constellating Peace from the Inside Out
An overview of the week spent together, highlighting key moments of learning and reflecting on how Catalyst for Peace strived to build a space not just for knowledge-sharing, but for transformation.

Building Peace from the Inside ….Keep reading this post >

“Community Healing from the Inside Out”

by Libby Hoffman

We’re pleased to share “Community Healing From the Inside Out: Systems lessons from Fambul Tok in Sierra Leone,” a chapter by Libby Hoffman that’s included in the book, Locally-Led Peacebuilding: Global Case Studies, edited by Stacey L. Connaughton and Jessica Berns, coming from Rowman & Littlefield in September 2019.

Enjoy!

 

At the heart of it all

by Libby Hoffman

What exactly IS #insideoutpeace? And what does it mean for leading transformational social change in the world?

We are happy to announce the release of our new publication Building Peace from the Inside Out: A Transformational Approach to Partnership, which traces the emergence-in-practice of #insideoutpeace as it has been embodied through the decade+ partnership of Catalyst for Peace and Fambul Tok in Sierra Leone, the partnership at the heart of it ….Keep reading this post >

One Family

by CFP

We twice had a bonfire on the beach we shared together during our week of Constellating Peace From the Inside Out.

Our last participants have left this beautiful beach for their homes, and now the work of carrying these lessons forward begins. There were so many new connections fostered, so much knowledge and experience shared, so many beautiful goodbyes — including this poem from Stephen Wicken, which he wrote ….Keep reading this post >