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People’s Planning Process – a map

Posted by Amy Czajkowski & filed under Blog, News-and-events, Updates From the Field.

The People’s Planning Process as Fambul Tok has developed it in Sierra Leone works from the village to the district level with extensive meetings, sensitization and the establishment of platforms that will be long-term mechanisms for organizing at the section, chiefdom and district levels. It involves representation of all stakeholder groups and is carried out in partnership with traditional leaders and local government. Throughout the process, Fambul Tok staff compile ….Keep reading this post >

Growing Inclusive Governance – From the Inside Out

Posted by Libby Hoffman & filed under Blog, News-and-events, Updates From the Field.

CFP continues its decade-long partnership with Fambul Tok (FT) in Sierra Leone to support communities in post-Ebola healing that leads to engagement in healthy partnerships for long-term peace and development. The People’s Planning Process places people and communities in the very center of recovery and on-going development. The PPP is growing from village to section to chiefdom to district to, ultimately, the national level. Using an inside-out approach, this process is ….Keep reading this post >

Tribute to Fambul Tok colleague, Sheku Koroma

Posted by Amy Czajkowski & filed under Blog, News-and-events.

This morning 4600 miles away, my colleague Sheku Koroma passed on after a short illness. I didn’t even know he was sick. I was stunned, shocked and in disbelief. I had just emailed him to ask for clarification about content for a manual we are working on together. Catalyst for Peace and Fambul Tok, where Sheku has worked since its inception, have been partner organizations, and the staff of both ….Keep reading this post >

Embodying Fambul Tok

Posted by Libby Hoffman & filed under Blog.

“Sheku IS Fambul Tok,” said John Caulker (the ED of Fambul Tok) when we spoke after learning of the sudden passing last week of one of the founding leaders of Fambul Tok, our dear colleague, friend and brother, Sheku Koroma. And while John’s statement helps explain the depth of the shock and grief at Sheku’s loss, it also illuminates a core strength, promise and power of Fambul Tok, and indeed ….Keep reading this post >

Honoring Sheku, Remembering Wi Na Wan Fambul

Posted by Charles Gibbs & filed under Blog.

The sudden passing of Sheku Koroma, a founding staff member of Fambul Tok, not only stunned his colleagues at Fambul Tok and all of us at Catalyst for Peace (CFP), it raised the question of how to honor the life of a beloved family member who, in a heartbeat, was no longer among us.

One way is to remember Sheku by telling the family’s story – the larger ‘fambul’ he helped ….Keep reading this post >

Grateful To Join Catalyst for Peace

Posted by Charles Gibbs & filed under Blog, News-and-events.

“Each of us will die one day –  

it doesn’t matter.  

More important is to practice living.”

These lines from a poem in my new book – Light Reading: Poems from a Pilgrim Journey – have everything to do with why I feel privileged to join Catalyst for Peace as Senior Partner and Poet-in-Residence.

Why? Because I can’t imagine a better place for me than CFP to practice living. I’m invited to ….Keep reading this post >

Joining the CFP Staff

Posted by Amy Czajkowski & filed under Blog, News-and-events.

by Amy Potter Czajkowski

I am deeply grateful for the invitation to join the Catalyst for Peace staff.  I have had a number of consulting and other relationships with CFP over the years, but I’m now officially on board. I love working for an organization grounded in values and led by a strong sense of vision and purpose. CFP embraces whole people and whole systems peacebuilding and has been pioneering in ….Keep reading this post >

Local women lead in preventing Ebola

Posted by Libby Hoffman & filed under Blog, News-and-events.

Local people – and especially local women – are the real experts in keeping their communities Ebola-free. Fambul Tok’s “Peace Mothers” – local women who have been leading their communities in healing the wounds of Sierra Leone’s decade-long civil war – have used their networks, skill and commitment to provide critical leadership in preventing the spread of Ebola. They show how working locally and over the long term helps create resilient ….Keep reading this post >

We are ALL “outsiders” …and all “insiders”

Posted by Libby Hoffman & filed under Blog, Featured, Our Approach.

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 >

What We Make Space For, Emerges

Posted by Libby Hoffman & filed under Blog, Our Approach.

Why do I tell this story now? Because it shows how creative, expectant, appreciative perspectives from outside a community in conflict can support that community as it works to build peace from within. 

It was November 14, 2007. John Caulker and I gathered with a handful of trusted colleagues in the Carlyle Hotel in Washington, D.C. to plan the launch of an as-yet-unnamed program of community reconciliation in Sierra Leone. John ….Keep reading this post >