Posts Categorized: Blog

Showers of Recognition

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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Cultivating Learning and Design Spaces – Part 3

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 >

Cultivating Learning and Design Spaces – Part 2

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 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 >

#InsideOutPeace Continues to Gain Traction

Last week, CFP co-hosted the virtual event, Governance that Centers Communities: Lessons from Afghanistan and Sierra Leone with partners at the International Peace Institute and Institute for State Effectiveness and co-sponsored by the Government of Sierra Leone, and the Permanent Mission of Afghanistan to the United Nations. Encapsulating why centering community in governance matters, Rasoul Rasouli, Former Director General, Citizens’ Charter in Afghanistan said, “Community is the heart of the society, ….Keep reading this post >

UN General Assembly side event – You’re invited

How can government policies invite local community voices to lead and support local priorities and agency in international peace and development? On October 14th, CFP president Libby Hoffman and Fambul Tok director John Caulker will share their experience building a national policy framework in Sierra Leone that has done just that. CFP is co-hosting a post-United National General Assembly event with the International Peace Institute, the Institute for State Effectiveness, ….Keep reading this post >

Funding and Design for Local Ownership: What helps? What hurts?

A guiding question for CFP is — how can practice shift across the whole system (organizations, government, international bodies, and funders) to center communities’ leadership, priorities and capacities in peace and development? To explore this question in the international arena, last September CFP hosted, with the International Peace Institute and the Government of Sierra Leone, a side-event to the UN General Assembly. Central to that event was the exploration of ….Keep reading this post >

Learning from Ebola: Lessons from Sierra Leone for COVID-19

Many nations are facing a dangerous, wide-spread infectious virus for the first time in recent memory and are scrambling to learn and respond from day to day. I recently talked with my colleague and CFP’s long-term organizational partner in Sierra Leone, John Caulker, Executive Director of Fambul Tok about lessons learned in Sierra Leone from the Ebola virus disease outbreak that took place in his country between 2014-2016 with 14,000 ….Keep reading this post >

As Our Work Grows, So Too Is Our Team

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

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 >