PEACEBUILDER THE MAGAZINE OF THE CENTER FOR JUSTICE AND PEACEBUILDING AT EASTERN MENNONITE UNIVERSITY
2017-18
PEACEBUILDER 2017-18
FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
JUSTICE THAT HEALS J. DARYL BYLER
PEACEBUILDER is published annually by Eastern Mennonite University, with the collaboration of its development office: Kirk L. Shisler, vice president for advancement, and Lindsay Martin, CJP associate director of development. The Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP) is rooted in Anabaptist-Christian theology and life, characterized by values and traditions that include nonviolence, right relationships and just community. CJP educates a global community of peacebuilders through the integration of practice, theory and research. CJP is based at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and offers two master’s-level degrees and certificates, as well as non-degree training through its Summer Peacebuilding Institute and the Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) program. Donations to CJP are tax-deductible and support the program, the university that houses it, scholarships for peace and justice students, and other essentials. Visit www.emu.edu/cjp for more information.
LEADERSHIP TEAM SUSAN SCHULTZ HUXMAN / President FRED KNISS / Provost
Around the world, communities are hungry for justice that addresses root causes and fosters healing. For too long, justice narrowly focused on punishment through prisons, a treatment of symptoms that has been tried and found wanting. Healing justice melds together the biblical themes of truth, grace and restored relationships and systems. At CJP, we are honored to play a key role in this blossoming restorative justice movement. In June 2016, the EMU Board of Trustees approved an MA degree in restorative justice – the first such graduate degree offered at a residential university in North America. The story of Gregory Winship, the first graduate of this ground-breaking program, is featured on page 2 of Peacebuilder.
J. DARYL BYLER / CJP Executive director
During the past academic year, CJP engaged healing justice work in many ways: CJP MANAGEMENT TEAM J. DARYL BYLER JAYNE SEMINARE DOCHERTY WILLIAM GOLDBERG PATIENCE KAMAU KATIE MANSFIELD KATHY SMITH ALENA YODER STAFF LAUREN JEFFERSON / Editor-in-chief JON STYER / Creative director LINDSEY KOLB / Proofreader JOSHUA LYONS / Web designer PATIENCE KAMAU / Mailing list manager
For more information or address changes, contact: Center for Justice and Peacebuilding Eastern Mennonite University 1200 Park Road Harrisonburg VA 22802 cjp@emu.edu 540-432-4000 www.emu.edu/cjp
• CJP students Lenore Bajare-Dukes and Jennifer Chi Lee, along with Jodie Geddes MA ‘16, assisted in a national mapping exercise to gather data about the nature and extent of current truth-telling, racial healing, memorialization and social transformation initiatives. Lenore completed her practicum at The Conciliation Project in Richmond, Virginia. See page 28. • Dr. Johonna Turner and Dr. Kathy Evans, of EMU’s MA in education program, were part of the planning team led by teachers and staff of Jackson (Mississippi) Public Schools to design a restorative justice intervention. Dr. Turner also taught CJP’s first online RJ course. • CJP participated on a design team for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation enterprise – “a comprehensive, national and community-based process to plan for and bring about transformational and sustainable change, and to address the historic and contemporary effects of racism.” • The Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice was awarded a $104,000 grant to lead a national process aimed at identifying the most strategic areas to invest in order to support the RJ movement. See page 25. • Dr. Carl Stauffer’s “Truth-telling, Reconciliation and Restorative Justice” course – co-taught with Dr. Nicholas Rowe – drew 24 participants at our Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI). As we move into the 2017-18 academic year, new RJ opportunities are sprouting: • Seven members of the incoming 2017-18 cohort will work towards the MA in restorative justice degree. • The Zehr Institute will host a fall webinar series focused on how restorative justice approaches can be used to help acknowledge and transform the legacy of slavery and racial injustice in the United States. That series will be followed by a short online course on RJ for police departments. • Twenty-five Brazilian judges, professors and civil society leaders will spend an intensive week at CJP in October. Brazil has taken bold steps to integrate RJ in its judicial and educational systems. • Charlottesville Mennonite Church co-pastor Roy Hange, who frequently teaches a faith-based peacebuilding course at SPI, is working with clergy and community leaders in the aftermath of racially motivated violence that rocked Charlottesville in mid-August. See page 10. Indeed there is growing hunger for justice that heals. Will you join CJP in helping this movement to flourish?
CONTENTS
FEATURES
2 FIRST RESTORATIVE JUSTICE GRAD In Missouri and Kansas, Gregory Winship aims to transform the lives of those working and living in prisons.
10 CHARLOTTESVILLE: PHOTOESSAY 18
Recent violence in nearby Charlottesville, Virginia, exposes divisions, brings challenges home to CJP.
ON THE COVER Lenore Bajare-Dukes MA ’17 (right) with Dr. Ram Bhagat and other members of The Conciliation Project, a theater-based truthtelling organization, during a workshop in Richmond, Virginia. BajareDukes was in her spring practicum; Bhagat is a board member and working on a graduate certificate in restorative justice at CJP. PHOTO BY ANDREW STRACK
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4
2
FROM THE FIELD
PROGRAMS
16
Partnering with local organizations, CJP helps smooth transitions for refugee teens.
STRATEGIES FOR TRAUMA AWARENESS AND RESILIENCE
12 MEET THE STUDENTS
18
Photos and bios of first-year graduate students.
SUMMER PEACEBUILDING INSTITUTE
14 YEAR IN REVIEW 10
View CJP program highlights in the United States and around the world.
22 WOMEN’S PEACEBUILDING LEADERSHIP PROGRAM
25 ZEHR INSTITUTE
28 MA DEGREE PROGRAMS 4
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FEATURES
FIRST MASTER’S IN RESTORATIVE JUSTICE GRADUATE Building on the past to share his vision of justice
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WHEN GREGORY WINSHIP MA ‘17 begins teaching a new course of conflict transformation training at United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth, he waits until the second session to share his past. In that session, he shares an optical illusion. Some participants see a frog, others a horse. Winship then tells them that he was once sitting where they are sitting, “and even though I am now the one facilitating the class, I understand where they’re coming from.” The atmosphere changes, he says. The space is suddenly shared. He is not only a teacher but a companion. Those who see a frog now see a horse, and those who see a horse now see a frog. His lesson goal of “helping them to see and perceive differently” is fulfilled in a heartbeat. Winship is the most credible of “credible messengers” – someone who has done wrong, harmed others, learned, grown, changed and determined that his life, and his unexpected freedom, is only worth something if he devotes it to helping others. He works to help those on the inside and the outside transform their own perceptions of justice and form right relationships.
FEATURES
He read about Zehr’s principles of restorative justice about 14 years into his prison sentence. The principles resonated immediately, he said. Since joining the Center for Conflict Resolution in Kansas City and beginning studies at EMU, Winship has engaged in training residents about conflict resolution, restorative justice and trauma resilience. All of these skills he sees as essential to personal growth inside the prison and in the transition back into society. (Approximately 95 percent of inmates return to society, according to the Department of Justice.) After one conflict resolution training, an administrator saw residents “practicing the skills they learned in class,” something she had not seen before with other programs. She has invited Winship to train staff. Winship’s response: “Let me train staff and residents together.” CHANGING CULTURE
Gregory Winship MA ’17 presents his capstone project featuring his restorative justice work in Kansas and Missouri prisons. PHOTO BY ANDREW STRACK
To that indelible credibility, add this: Winship is the first graduate of Eastern Mennonite University’s MA in restorative justice program. In Winship’s work and his research, he has begun to propose an incremental but ground-breaking integration of restorative, rather than retributive, principles into the prison culture. “I have come to have great respect for his reflective, inquiring mind, his integrity and his commitment to using his experience and gifts to make the world better,” said Howard Zehr, distinguished professor of restorative justice at EMU. “He is uniquely equipped and highly motivated to do so.” FINDING PURPOSE Finding a purpose began almost immediately after Winship entered a maximum-security prison at age 29, with five consecutive life sentences ahead of him. Winship, who previously earned his degree in business administration from Graceland University in Iowa, became the program clerk and curriculum developer of an on-site branch campus of Wilmington University, as well as a literacy and GED tutor.
Bringing residents and staff into a room where they learn and explore skills of conflict resolution is potentially groundbreaking, culture-changing work. What greater benefits are there, to both parties, to the prison itself, and the wider community if residents and staff learn and practice conflict resolution skills together? Would prisons be more rehabilitative environments if the relationships were collaborative instead of combative? If residents were treated as vessels of hope and healing instead of “an object or something we don’t want to know anymore”? He presented this theory of change to CJP professors and classmates in the spring. When he finished, Zehr proposed a retreat of formerly incarcerated individuals. For Winship, this convergence had real possibilities: for years, he had thought about starting a national organization of formerly incarcerated individuals to be mentors of the restorative process to those impacted and harmed through the criminal justice system. This organization would also work to change the public image of returning citizens and to influence policy-makers. “We need to start looking at our past as something that is a benefit and not a detriment, and we need to be responsible and accountable for our actions,” he says. “All the restorative justice processes speak to that.” He is not proud of why he spent 20 years in prison or the hurt he caused so many people. He’d like to change that part of his past. But he can’t and so he’s working at making that right, slowly, one day and one relationship at a time. He owns his choices, then and now. “Without those 20 years, I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing now,” Winship says. “That combination and the culmination of events in my life so far makes me think I’m in the right place at the right time. I know that there is a bigger purpose than just me, but where that leads, I don’t know. I feel like I’m on the right path.” — LAUREN JEFFERSON
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FROM THE FIELD
HIGH SCHOOL REFUGEES LEARN FROM STAR TRAINING FOR 15 STUDENTS participating in a resilience training at Eastern Mennonite University, one role-play activity hit close to home. The small-group skits invited them to learn how their actions might be a result of an emotional response: how, for example, teasing Pakistani refugee Hayat Zahra,16, about her hijab might be a result of their own discomfort in a new American culture. “That was hard,” Zahra said later. Though the situation was only acting, her emotional response was visible. The high school students, refugees from Africa and the Middle East who are members of a leadership training program, were then able to talk about how words can hurt and how such hurt might cause other negative behaviors. Harrisonburg High’s Peer Leaders program is a grant-funded project involving partners Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg High School and Church World Service (CWS). James Madison University’s Center for International Stabilization and Recovery leads the program. Monthly sessions alternate between providing information about community and school opportunities and group activities off-campus. Swahili speaker and CJP graduate student Kajungu Mturi, from Tanzania, and Felix Kioko ’17, now a graduate student at CJP, facilitated the group. In spring 2017, Katie Mansfield, director of the Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) program, led a day-long workshop about how the body responds to stress and how those responses can lead to unhelpful behaviors. Gloria Bafunye, a ninth-grader from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, explained it as the difference “between
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head and heart, how sometimes you think something and your body is because of that.” Mansfield, who typically works with adults, said she was inspired by the students’ sensitivity, insights and questions. For this day with 30 high-schoolers, she drew upon her first experiences in peace education with an organization called Peace Games. Mansfield offered arts-based activities, small-group sharing and team-building experiences. EMU resources were also tapped in a fall training with a CJP team that included Professor Johonna Turner; Practice Director Amy Knorr; then-graduate students Mturi, Diana Tovar, Jalal Maqableh; and Jacques Mushagasha MA ’16.
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In a day soon after the U.S. presidential elections, when many questions had begun to surface, the group helped students explore their questions and strategies for engagement. Though they may not have mastered English and may not realize their own influence, high school-age refugees are vital contributors and leaders within the high school community, said Rebecca Sprague, of CWS. Self-advocacy is another goal, said Laura Feichtinger-McGrath, ESL coordinator at the high school, “both for themselves and their peers … recognizing they can’t change the traumas of their past, and they all have traumas, but also not allowing their past experiences to cripple them or close doors to opportunities.” — LAUREN JEFFERSON
Peer Leaders at Harrisonburg High School play a game after school with facilitators Felix Kioko (third from left) and Kajungu Mturi (fourth from left). Kioko, from Kenya, and Mturi, from Tanzania, are both students at Eastern Mennonite University, one of four community partners to support the program. Approximately 40 students participate in afterschool activities to build skills and introduce them to school and community resources. PHOTO BY JOAQUIN SOSA
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FROM THE FIELD
ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN THE PEACEBUILDING WORLD LYDELL STEINER’S VOCATION came calling in the form of a persistent acquaintance who recognized his skills might fit a community need. The Ohio native was a team pastor at Kidron Mennonite Church when a community member repeatedly asked if he’d consider developing local mediation resources. At the time, Steiner was enrolled in Eastern Mennonite Seminary, and had taken a few Summer Peacebuilding Institute courses. But the recurring request for local mediation made him reevaluate his educational path. Steiner gathered a trusted group to help discern his next step. He decided to transfer into CJP’s graduate program in conflict transformation. Eventually, he devoted the required semester-long practicum to exploring mediation possibilities in Ohio. This research culminated in a “visioning session” in July 2014. Steiner invited key stakeholders from Holmes and Wayne counties to brainstorm how a mediation center might look and function. He also invited his advisor, Professor David Brubaker, to facilitate the gathering so that Steiner himself could present on the results of his extensive conversations with leaders from throughout the two-county area. Steiner says this was “the moment that really helped me co-
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PHOTO BY DENICE ROVIRA HA ZLET T/ SPROUTED ACORN PHOTOGRAPHY
alesce.” The group identified education and training in conflict transformation and networking for existing mediation resources as their primary objectives. They also decided to proceed in “an organic model,” says Steiner, gathering volunteer efforts rather than building an organization from the top down. Broad community support is more important, Steiner says, than “the injection of a lot of energy, a lot of vision, a lot of money, a lot of building.” This approach means that growth is slow, but hopefully, more sustainable. Twelve individuals continued to meet, forming a steering committee. Two years after earning his master’s degree – and the practicum experience which provided the foundation – Steiner and his community partners have created Connexus, a nonprofit organization committed to “transforming the culture of conflict in Holmes and Wayne counties of Ohio.” Brubaker says CJP students typically come in on one of two tracks. Some enter the program unsure of their focus and discover it along the way. Others, like Steiner, enter with a vision of the work they are called to do. CJP then equips them to achieve those goals. “That kind of entrepreneurship is what the peacebuilding community needs,” says Brubaker. — RANDI B. HAGI
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PHOTO BY JOAQUIN SOSA
JEAN CLAUDE NKUNDWA EARNS CJP PEACEBUILDER OF THE YEAR AWARD Jean Claude Nkundwa MA ’14, who works for peace in his native country of Burundi from exile in Rwanda, accepted the CJP’s Peacebuilder of the Year award in May. The award, which comes with a travel and tuition grant to attend a session of the Summer Peacebuilding Institute, had already helped the cause of peace that he works for. Nkundwa is executive secretary of Burundi Citizen Synergy, a collaborative group of movements, media leaders and labor union groups working on joint advocacy and communication strategies for peace in Burundi. The travel grant that brought him to CJP enabled advocacy with politicians and peacebuilders: Prior to the ceremony, Nkundwa was in Washington D.C., where he participated in briefings with the National Security Council and the U.S. State Department, and met with Senator Christopher Coons (D-Delaware) and Senator Cory Booker (D-New Jersey). The CJP Peacebuilder of the Year Award is given annually “to CJP alumni who have demonstrated exceptional commitment to CJP’s mission of supporting conflict transformation, restorative justice, trauma healing, development, organizational leadership and peace-
building efforts at all levels of society,” according to CJP Executive Director Daryl Byler. Nkundwa is the third recipient of the award. Other recipients are: in 2015, Ali Gohar MA ’02, founder and executive director of Just Peace Initiatives in Pakistan, and in 2016, Tammy Krause MA ’99, an expert in restorative justice. All alumni who have earned master’s degrees or graduate certificates in conflict transformation from CJP are eligible. In his acceptance speech at a luncheon in his honor, Nkundwa said that the award was for “involvement, not achievement,” and promised to work to bring about change in his country and the region. He acknowledged fellow Burundi citizens in exile such as Pierre Claver Mbonimpa and those citizens who remain in Burundi who continue to protest human rights abuses. Nkundwa also noted deceased peacebuilding colleague M.J. Sharp ‘05, a fellow EMU graduate whom he had never met but heard many stories about while working in Africa’s Great Lakes region. Sharp, a U.N. official, was killed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo while on a factfinding mission. “I accept this award in the names of all those people I respect so much,” Nkundwa said. He also praised the academic and practical preparation provided by his conflict transformation coursework at CJP. Now, when confronted with people who say, “It is not possible,” he says, “we must make it possible.” — LAUREN JEFFERSON
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FROM THE FIELD
IRAQI YOUTH WORK TO BUILD CULTURE OF PEACE IN AN IRAQI MALL ON VALENTINE’S DAY, shoppers were treated to a unique sight. Twenty-eight young people wearing traditional dress from the many cultures in the country congregated to sing, dance, and hand out flowers and balloons with messages of love and inclusivity. The event, one of 42 created and implemented by Iraqi youth across Iraq, was to promote peaceful coexistence and cultural acceptance among Iraqi communities struggling through a divisive political climate. The project brings together Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding and the Iraqi al-Amal Association in a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)-funded project. The multi-phase plan focuses on the key stakeholders of youth and academics to build a culture of peace in the country. Five EMU faculty and alumni are involved: Dr. Alma Abdul-hadi Jadallah, president and managing director of Kommon Denominator, and CJP adjunct faculty; Aala Ali MA ’14, UNDP development officer; Cynthia Nassif MA ’14 of Lebanon and Najla El Mangoush MA ’15 of Libya, both doctoral students at George Mason University; and Ahmed Tarik MA ’16 of Iraq. Nassif, Mangoush and Tarik helped Jadallah design workshops on conflict resolution in Arabic for both youth and academics. Jadallah provided the first training for youth in October 2016, followed by two others for youth and three for academics from Iraqi universities. While the academic trainings will lead to a peacebuilding curriculum that will be shared by universities across Iraq, the youth trainings culminated in a series of community peacebuilding project proposals. Mangoush appreciated the opportunity to work together with CJP alumni, “practicing our beliefs and skills as peacebuilders from different Arabic countries to assist peace in Iraq.” An important aspect of the project, she adds, is “acknowledg-
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ing the need to promote peace from a local perspective and through religious tolerance.” More than 563 youth from Najaf, Nineveh and Baghdad applied to participate. Seventy-two were selected, with criteria including age, potential, experience, connections, responsibility, diversity and vision. After the trainings, participants created project proposals that employed sports, arts, social media, listening and dialogue to address a variety of topics: women’s rights, children’s education, displaced persons and host community engagement, and interfaith dialogue and conflict resolution workshops, according to Nassif. Muntather Hassan, youth program coordinator for the Iraqi al-Amal Association, attended each training, worked with youth on their proposals, and watched selected projects come to fruition. Besides the Valentine’s Day project, other funded projects
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Youth wearing traditional dress dance in Iraq in February 2017 as part of a community event celebrating cultural and faith differences. The event was just one of many culminating projects that resulted from youth peacebuilding and leadership trainings, funded by United Nations Development Programme and faciliated by the Iraqi al-Amani Association and Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. Four CJP alumni have contributed. PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE IRAQI AL-AMANI ASSOCIATION
include a Facebook page started by five artists to showcase peace-themed artworks (50 artists have contributed) and visitation programs in Erbil, where Muslim activists visited internally displaced Christian children, and in Baghdad, where both Christian and Muslim activists visited Muslim children. Though Iraq is full of problems, Hassan says young people see a chance to make a difference and to address issues “the older generation can’t see.” They are encouraged, he said, by the desire to live a normal life without fear, “ordinary needs that give them motivation.” “A journey like this comes once a life,” wrote one participant. Another shared that he felt “loved, respected, supported and listened to.” Yet another learned “not all Muslims are ISIS.” “Mohammed came back from Erbil as a different person, a better one,” said one participant’s parents. — LAUREN JEFFERSON
From left: Paola Piccione, UNDP; Alma Jadallah, CJP adjunct faculty; Aala Ali MA ‘14, UNDP; and Mizuho Yokoi, UNDP, consult during a training.
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FEATURES
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA August 12, 2017 The pedestrian mall in Charlottesville, Virginia (below, right) is quiet more than a week after white supremacists clashed with counter-demonstrators near a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee. Nineteen people were injured, and one killed, when a vehicle was driven into a crowd. The violence highlighted unresolved issues related to current political tensions, as well as the United States’ history of slavery. In the aftermath, the statue was shrouded (right) and a memorial created (below). The events, just 60 miles away from Harrisonburg, lend an urgency to CJP’s continued work in healing historic harms, truth-telling, memorialization and dialogue (see pages 19 and 28). PHOTOS BY JON ST YER
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FEATURES
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MEET THE STUDENTS ELIZABETH KRISHNA FELIX KIOKO
FILIP CVETANOVSKI TALIBAH AQUIL SAMIRA ABOU ALFA a Fulbright scholar, earned a bachelor’s degree in political science/international affairs from the Lebanese American University in Beirut. She has volunteered with the Lebanese Red Cross, Search for Common Ground and Mercycorps International, where she worked after graduation with refugees and children.
a native of Harlem, New York, earned a BFA in musical theater from Howard University and has toured nationally and internationally with the dance company StepAfrika! After two years in Rwanda with the PeaceCorps, she is certain of her calling: using the arts as a form of ministry and healing by working with people in countries that have experienced war, trauma, misplacement, conflict and/or genocide.
LIANA HERSHEY studied peacebuilding and development and environmental sustainability at EMU. She went on her cross-cultural to Guatemala and Cuba, and completed a three-month practicum in Colombia.
BOUELA LEHBIB BREICA
JIM COLE
EUNKYUNG AHN a teacher in South Korea, will earn an MA in education with a focus on restorative justice, as well as a graduate certificate in conflict transformation. She is also a researcher at the Center of Restorative Justice in Education, affiliated with the Good Teachers, Christian Teachers Association, and has led circle processes and translated books about RJE.
a Fulbright scholar from Macedonia, has a BA in political science and an MA in international relations and diplomacy from The Saints Cyril and Methodius University. He worked with Youth Reconciliation Ambassadors and was a member of the team that wrote and signed a “Declaration on Regional Cooperation in the Western Balkans,” efforts that were recognized by the president of Macedonia.
served as youth coordinator for five years with Cathedral of Praise Ministries in Kenya before moving to the United States. For the last three years, he has initiated and overseen sustainable projects in local villages in eastern Kenya through a family nonprofit, GLOW Foundation. A recent graduate of EMU, he has interned with Church World Service and worked with refugee and immigrant youth at the local high school.
from the Fiji Islands, belongs to the Roman Catholic Church and was born into an interfaith family; her father is Hindu and her mother a Catholic. She worked as a civil servant from 1990-2016 in the ministry of public service commission, ministry of foreign affairs and the office of the prime minister. After retirement, she continues to work full time in inter-cultural and inter-faith peacebuilding under the umbrella of the Catholic Church in Fiji. She earned a graduate certificate in peacebuilding leadership in 2013 as part of the Women’s Peacebuilding Leadership Program.
a singer/songwriter/recording artist based in Nashville, Tennessee, has performed around the world for more than 25 years. The experience of being a spiritual advisor for a man who was eventually executed in Ohio in 2008, opened his eyes to a landscape in desperate need of reform and ministry. He is currently the spiritual advisor for another inmate on death row.
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LIVIA GRIFFITH
EMILY HIGGINS
is director of information technology for the College of Integrated Science and Engineering at James Madison University, where she also volunteers for the Office of Student Accountability and Restorative Practices. She is the daughter of German immigrants, one parent a Holocaust survivor and the other with family members who served in the German army. She hopes to be a beacon of light towards the benefits of restorative justice in her local community.
is a recent graduate from Lipscomb University where she studied Spanish, creative writing and law, justice and society. Living in Kekoldi Indigenous Reserve in Costa Rica, she was inspired by the Bribri people’s continual parallel struggles for human rights and environmental conservation. She has worked and volunteered with several nonprofits as an English tutor for immigrants and refugees and on various smallscale sustainable agriculture projects.
is the first Saharawi to be awarded a Fulbright scholarship. From Western Sahara, Bouela was raised in one of the world’s largest refugee camps in Algeria. He completed degrees in communication and journalism, and translation, and then was awarded a scholarship to earn a master’s degree at Las Palmas University, Algeria. He then helped establish the first Department of Translation and Interpreting in the Saharawi Ministry for Public Services. His most recent work was for the Danish Refugee Council as a livelihoods team leader.
MARISABEL KUBIAK has led numerous community mobilization and behavior change initiatives, most notably for the World Health Organization, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Global Fund, National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She holds a master’s in public health from the University of Pittsburgh, and a bachelor’s degree in journalism. She is currently senior technical advisor for Links Global and runs a 30-acre farm in Western Maryland.
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MAHA MEHANNA
BETHANY RENATA LOBERG from Salem, Oregon, has spent six years working in human rights and peacebuilding in El Salvador. She’s also worked for Oregon’s Immigrant Rights Coalition and most recently, as a Spanish medical interpreter and youth ministries leader at Salem Mennonite Church. She has a bachelor’s degree in peace, conflict and justice studies from Goshen College.
a Winston Fellow at SPI in 2016, works for Applied Information Management (AIM) as office coordinator and senior translator. She studied community development in Canada and worked for local and international NGOs in Gaza. She is a member of several peace organizations: Other Voice, Friendship Across Borders (FAB), and the General Assembly of Dalia Association. She speaks frequently around the world and has been featured in two documentaries.
is earning degrees in peacebuilding and development, Spanish and Hispanic studies at EMU. She interned in Colombia with Mennonite Central Committee and spent a semester studying in Guatemala and Cuba. She is from Staunton, Virginia.
has served vulnerable communities in Honduras alongside a Catholic orphanage and a medical mission. While earning a degree in peacebuilding from EMU, she worked with Mennonite Central Committee during the peace process in Colombia, and travelled on a semester-long cross-cultural in the Middle East. Alyssa’s dream is to gain tools and experiences with her degree to take back to Honduras and aid vulnerable communities in building lasting peace.
CLAUDIA MOREIRA
MELODY M. PANNELL
of Sao Paulo, Brazil, coaches executives in management positions. She worked for World Vision in Brazil as a marketing and fundraising director. With experience in multinational corporations, she has a degree in business and post-graduate studies in marketing and non-profits management. She serves in the humanitarian committee of a local church and is a board member of Brazilian Center for Missiological Reflection Martureo.
has served in the field of social work, higher education and ministry for over 25 years. She is an assistant professor of social work and chair of EMU’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee. As a response to social disparities affecting adolescent girls in her native Harlem, New York, community, she founded The Seventh Avenue Mennonite Church Girls Group in 1990, which has now evolved into the women’s empowerment ministry Destiny’s Daughters.
ANNA MESSER KAMRAN MAMEDOVI a Fulbright scholar, is a citizen of the Republic of Georgia with an ethnic Azerbaijani background. He has a bachelor’s degree in international relations and an MA in public governance. He plans to play a significant role in strengthening and democratizing Georgia, which is challenged by a diverse population and miscommunication between vulnerable groups and the majority.
JUSTINE MARAVU is a project officer and facilitator at Pacific Centre for Peacebuilding in Fiji. She earned a graduate certificate in peacebuilding leadership in 2014 under the Women’s Peacebuilding Leadership Program.
ALYSSA MOYER BARAHONA
BAHMAN SHAHI
KATRINA POPLETT a Minnesota native, will be pursuing an MA in restorative justice. She is completing a bachelor’s degree at EMU in peacebuilding and development, with focuses in sociology and Spanish. Katrina has worked with several nonprofit organizations to gain perspective into how societies try to tackle large social injustices. She is a trained and licensed mediator and facilitates restorative processes both in Minnesota and Virginia.
BENJAMIN RUSH from Quakertown, Pennsylvania, is earning a degree in peacebuilding at EMU and beginning work on a master’s degree in restorative justice.
a Fulbright scholar, is from Afghanistan. He earned a degree in English literature from Kabul University, and is an active member of Afghanistan’s civil society and debate circuit. He has worked for Seeds of Peace, a peacebuilding and leadership development organization, and at the Kabul-based Afghans for Progressive Thinking.
ASTUR TAHLIL earned a political science degree at the University of Southern Maine. She has served two years in AmeriCorps working on family engagement and child mentoring. She is a case manager for Catholic Charities’ Refugee and Immigration Services.
BENTON STULL is a former U.S. Army human intelligence collector whose changing religious beliefs eventually led to an honorable discharge as a conscientious objector. After volunteering in jail ministry and post-release support, he spent 10 months in the National Benevolent Association’s XPLOR program discerning a call to ministry. He has degrees in history and religion, and is a member of Veterans for Peace.
MIKAYLA WATERS-CRITTENTON earned degrees in sociology and criminal justice at Mary Baldwin University. She plans to earn a graduate certificate in restorative justice, then pursue law and MBA degrees.
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YEAR IN REVIEW
CJP HIGHLIGHTS 2016-17
2016 2016
Dr. Alma Abdul-Hadi Jadallah leads the first of six peacebuilding workshops for Iraqi academics and youth as part of a UNDP-funded project.
2017
STAR I training is held at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
The Zehr Institute of Restorative Justice hosts a retreat for law enforcement and RJ practitioners from four states.
Educators from Jackson (Mississippi) Public Schools, accompanied by Dr. Johonna Turner and Dr. Kathy Evans, visit restorative justice sites in Oakland, California, as part of a Kellogg Foundation planning grant to develop similar programs.
Professor Lisa Schirch provides a one-day training in Washington D.C. on the ecology of violent extremism. The full five-day course is offered at SPI 2017. CJP faculty and staff attend an institutional harms and healing forum, with a keynote address by victims advocate Tom Doyle, a former Catholic priest.
SEPTEMBER
NOVEMBER OCTOBER
Gwendolyn Myers GC ‘14 visits EMU to present research from her two-year fellowship with the Center for Women, Faith and Leadership Program at the Institute for Global Engagement, Washington D.C. STAR I is offered to CJP students and MA in Counseling students at EMU. WPLP Class 4 takes STAR I and the intervention design workshop in Nairobi.
JANUARY FEBRUARY
DECEMBER
More than 70 participants attend SPI Community Day. Approximately 35 participants are from Harrisonburg, with the remainder from Virginia, Maryland, Washington D.C., West Virginia and Pennsylvania. CJP is awarded $104,700 in grant funding to design strategic funding program recommendations for optimizing future impact and growth of the restorative justice movement. WPLP alumnae in Kenya establish Daima Amani Women’s Network (DAWN), a network of women peacebuilders who advocate for inclusion of women’s voices and perspectives in national policy and spread messages of peace at the grassroots level. Catholic Relief Services in Zimbabwe hosts a STAR I training.
Bshara Nassar MA ‘14, Palestinian native, brings the Nakba Museum Project to EMU, with sponsorship from CJP.
2016
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Diana Tovar (second from right), CJP’s first peacebuilding network coordinator, concludes her first semester of efforts to link nearly 600 alumni across the globe.
2016
STAR director Katie Mansfield leads a training for teenage refugees in Harrisonburg High School’s Peer Leaders program.
2017
FOCUS
2017 2017 2017 Graduate students produce two films with Arts in Peacebuilding grants.
Woré Ndiaye MA ’13 is chosen to lead the Senegalese Section of the Women, Youth, Peace and Security Working Group,which represents thousands of member organizations. Isabel Castillo ‘07, MA ‘17 is recognized as a “Movement Honoree” by Sojourners at the Healing and Resistance Summit in Washington D.C. Jean Claude Nkundwa MA ‘14, of Burundi, is presented with the CJP Peacebuilder of the Year Award.
CJP and EMU’s Visual and Communication Arts Department begin to explore a Masters in Fine Arts (MFA) in Peacebuilding degree program. STAR I is offered at EMU Lancaster in Pennsylvania.
CJP Executive Director Daryl Byler begins a 40-day fast for healing justice.
The 23rd Annual Summer Peacebuilding Institute begins.
MARCH
Five Fulbright scholars prepare to enter the graduate program in conflict transformation: (from left) Bouela Lehbib Breica, of Algeria; Filip Cvetanovski, of Macedonia; Samira Abou Alfa, of Lebanon; Mahman Shahi, of Afghanistan; and Kamran Mamedovi, Georgia. A total of 78 Fulbright scholars from 25 countries have graduated from CJP.
MAY
JULY
LOVE EMU DAY BADGE
APRIL
LovEMU
Giving
DAY
JUNE LovEMU Day, a university-wide fundraiser, helps CJP to raise $13,665 from 74 donors. Lindsay A. Martin, associate director of development lead a record-breaking year in CJP fundraising.
AUGUST
The National Park Service hosts a STAR training.
4.4.17 EMU celebrates the inauguration of Dr. Susan Schultz Huxman, the institution’s ninth president. Harrisonburg-area refugee leaders attend a one-day STAR training, offered in partnership with Church World Service. STAR presents “Trauma-informed Care for Homeless Services” at Lancaster County Redevelopment Authority. Howard Zehr gives the EMU commencement address, as the first master’s degree in restorative justice is awarded to Gregory Winship.
The second annual Restorative Justice in Education conference, hosted by the MA in Education program, attracts nearly 90 area practitioners. Professor Johonna Turner is the keynote speaker and Professor Kathy Evans provides a workshop session.
A partnership with Daughters For Life Foundation and executive director Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish will enable female scholars from the Middle East to study at CJP. A September 2017 fundraising gala dinner in Washington D.C. honors Leymah Gbowee MA ‘07, Ronit Avni and Suhad Babaa.
2017
2017
Commencement marks the graduation of 25 students.
2017
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STRATEGIES FOR TRAUMA AWARENESS AND RESILIENCE
TRANSFORMING THE FRONT LINES Syrian caregiving in crisis
TRAUMA AWARENESS SUPPORT IS ‘AS IMPORTANT AS BREAD: ONE FEEDS OUR SPIRITS AND THE OTHER OUR BODIES.’ —Syrian Orthodox Church clergy member WHEN DOUG AND NAOMI ENNS began their work as Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Representatives for Lebanon and Syria in August 2013, Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) program principles traveled with them. “We had taken STAR I prior to our arrival and knowing its strengths, thought it would be good to try,” said Naomi Enns. The Enns posited that the benefits of bringing a more robust and integrated STAR program to the region were exponential:
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Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) funded a Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) training in 2016 for Syrian community church leaders and frontline responders and Lebanese MCC partner staff working with refugees. PHOTO BY MAT THEW SAWATZKY
Through the creation of shared safe space, STAR trainings facilitate understanding of trauma and help participants implement strategies and tools to stop cycles of violence and find ways towards healing – within themselves, those they are in relationship with, and the broader community. Among the many beneficial results of STAR training are increased resiliency and networking of trauma-informed partners and caregivers across faith traditions and organizations. From the first training with Syrian Christians three years ago, STAR trainings – and the unique annual follow-up gatherings of participants – are now an integral contributor to MCC’s work in the region, which continues under Kate and Garry Mayhew, Lebanon and Syria representatives since May 2017 (Naomi and Doug Enns are now Western Europe reps). From EMU’s STAR program, Elaine Zook Barge and Vernon Jantzi have provided trainings. From MCC, the trainers and assistants have included Luzdy Stucky, associate for migration and peacebuilding with MCC West Coast; Krista Johnson Weicksel MA ’10, peacebuilding coordinator; Beth Good, health coordinator; and Heather Peters, restorative justice coordinator. Fadi Abi Allam, director of the Lebanon NGO Permanent Peace Movement, and Karen Friesen, MCC representative for Egypt, have facilitated follow-up gatherings. Approximately 60 people, of increasingly diverse back-
PROGRAMS
grounds, have participated. They come from a range of NGOs and church-based partners. Participants are male and female, Christian (Orthodox and evangelical) and Muslim, and from Lebanon, Egypt, and a diversity of rural and urban areas in Syria. Two trainings have included Palestinian refugees working for Lebanese partners. “This series of 5-day STAR trainings in Lebanon has been a key part of MCC’s disaster response to the Syrian crisis, says Johnson Weicksel, herself a STAR trainer. “STAR for MCC Lebanon/Syria partners has transformed those on the front lines of caregiving in crisis.” Weicksel notes that the program’s careful, intentional implementation, including an annual follow-up gathering, has built strong ties between both individuals and partner organizations, which often send staff for further training. Organizations report stronger resiliency in STAR-trained staff. “I know myself better now and I know that I’m resilient in the trauma I’m going through,” said one participant, a Muslim who works alongside Christians in Aleppo and has tailored her STAR-related knowledge to work with youth. An important part of the training is learning to recognize actions, reactions and behaviors that occur in the midst of or as a result of trauma. Understanding those physical and emotional responses leads to a better understanding of how to deal with such experiences in more positive ways, and to help others understand as well. “I used to only feel the trauma, now I can see it,” said one Palestinian participant. The training also provides a safe and shared space in which to grieve and grow. One male participant, whose family fled from Aleppo to the coastal city of Tartus, offered this moving description: Sometimes when you have to move a lot and lose the things that used to make you feel safe, it’s difficult to build new friendships, a safe environment, a place where you feel like you fit in. But here, you feel everyone is the same. When you speak about the things that happened to you, you find other people felt the same way at some point. Or they’re feeling the same way. You feel accepted. It’s really difficult to explain in words. You need to experience it. It gives you a different kind of strength that’s not available elsewhere, even sometimes in our own homes. For Naomi Enns, sharing in the laying of a foundation of resiliency will always be a treasured experience. Each session and following contact with participants affirmed the healing power of the STAR training, in which “mentors and teachers who understand trauma well help others through participatory approaches to gain skills that last a lifetime.” “To speak about one’s trauma and to be heard … there healing began,” she says. “Among people who care enough to listen, their story becomes a statement that they are able to live in the present and to step into the future with a bit more hope.” — LAUREN JEFFERSON
PALESTINIAN EDUCATORS ENJOY WEEK-LONG STAR TRAINING IN BETHLEHEM In January 2017, on their first day of winter break, a group of Palestinian teachers, administrators, counselors and other school workers gathered in Bethlehem to begin a week-long workshop examining the trauma that pervades life in the Occupied West Bank. Using an adapted version of EMU’s Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) curriculum, facilitator Meenakshi Chhabra led discussions and activities looking at trauma’s effects on the participants, their students and their classrooms. The training was organized by Seeds of Peace, a prominent peacebuilding organization that works with educators from conflict zones around the world. Despite some initial reluctance, participants were soon eagerly talking about their own experiences and learning from one another. “I think this was the first time many of them ever shared their own personal stories of trauma,” said Chhabra, a certified STAR trainer and professor at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “One of them said, ‘We don’t talk about this because everybody is going through it.’” To tailor the workshop to educators, Chhabra led discussions on discipline and restorative justice in education, classroom management, the impact of trauma on student learning and brain development, and strategies to create trauma-informed classrooms. Assisting Chhabra was Oraib Waari, a Palestinian teacher who adapted the curriculum and materials for the participants’ cultural and professional contexts. Daniel Noah Moses, director of educator programs for Seeds of Peace, was struck by the camaraderie and laughter that came to characterize the group sessions. “This course was a precious opportunity to take a breath, to reflect, to get support, to work at becoming more resilient even as they learned tools to help their students to engage effectively with trauma and build resilience in the midst of relentless difficulties that are difficult for those outside of such environments to understand,” Moses wrote in an email. Moses said Seeds of Peace hopes to offer similar STAR trainings for educators in the future. He said the curriculum “is thoughtful, sensitive and accessible, and meets pressing needs of people in communities where there is recurring trauma, where the future depends in large part on the extent to which people can develop resilience, along with practices for reflection, dialogue and engagement.” After the training, Chhabra said, several participants reported that they had gained new understandings of how trauma affects their own and their students’ lives, new tools to respond to this trauma and a new community of support beyond their own schools. — ANDREW JENNER
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SUMMER PEACEBUILDING INSTITUTE
2017 WINSTON FELLOWS The full-tuition scholarship for an international or indigenous person “new to peacebuilding” requires an application from the individual and a partnering organization. A six-week internship after attendance at SPI is also required, with specific objectives and an action plan.
SUMINA KARKI Sumina Karki, 29, is a program officer working primarily in community mediation and dialogue with The Asia Foundation. A founding member of the Nepalese feminist group Chaukath, she came to peacebuilding three years ago after working as a journalist and researcher. SPI provided Karki with new skills – she took courses in faithbased peacebuilding, conflict coaching, and truth-telling, reconciliation and restorative justice – but also time to “refuel and reflect,” she said. “Working along with local facilitators to bring stakeholders to dialogue and working with them, filling them with positivity and optimism, encouraging them – all of that takes a lot of mental, spiritual and physical energy.” At SPI, “there is so much to learn and you come to realize that you are not the only one, that there are people around the world who are working in really difficult situations and still hopeful that change can happen,” she said. “I have derived much positive energy from that.” Karki calls dialogue processes a “preventive and more proactive way of managing conflicts,” even in a country with caste, class, gender and ethnic divides. The Asia Foundation is widely regarded in Nepal for efforts in training communities about mediation and dialogue as a tool for conflict transformation and peacebuilding. This is an especially important tool for citizens in remote areas who cannot easily access judicial systems. Despite having a female president and around 30 percent female parliamentarians, Nepal is highly patriarchal. Out of 7,000 mediators, The Asia Foundation has trained more than 2,000 female mediators – an important step towards inclusion and equity at the community level, Karki says. — LAUREN JEFFERSON
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THERESA “TESSY” GUSIM-NDASULE Everyone leaves loved ones behind to come to SPI. However, gender-focused interfaith peacebuilder Theresa “Tessy” Gusim-Ndasule left an especially curious six-year-old son back in Nigeria who clearly intended to hold his mother accountable. “Every day, we talk and he says, ‘Mom, how are your classmates today?’ and I say, ‘They are fine,’ and then he says, ‘Mom, what did you learn about peace today?” And then she gives a full report. She also missed her daughter’s second birthday. But Gusim-Ndasule says her daughter will forgive her. “She’ll be happy when she grows up that I missed her second birthday because I was working in the pursuit of peace.” Gusim-Ndasule experienced interfaith violence as a child and on several other occasions in her life, which has provided motivation to address this topic as a program officer with the Baptist Church and the Women’s Missionary Union in Kaduna. Gusim-Ndasule hopes to train Christian and Muslim women together in conflict transformation skills and form a group to visit rural communities and Internally Displaced Persons camps. The sight of women of different faiths coming together to promote a culture of peace “will send a strong message to the women in the camps who are nursing grievances and holding onto grudges for what has been done to them.” Participating in SPI has been “a blessing,” she says. “I’ve seen how the community here lives and nobody looks at you by who you are or where you come from. It’s the humanity that matters. That is something I am taking in and taking with me. You see a light in everyone, no matter your race, your gender, your faith.” — LAUREN JEFFERSON
PROGRAMS
SPI 2017 PREPARES U.S. PEACEBUILDERS FOR CIVIC ENGAGEMENT AND TOUGH CONVERSATIONS IN POLARIZED TIMES
Participants in Dr. Johonna Turner’s “Formation for Peacebuilding Practice” explored communication techniques, dialogue and decision-making. PHOTO BY ANDREW STRACK
Rosemarie Bello Truland, a lawyer who teaches sociology at Brookdale Community College in New Jersey, found inspiration at the 2017 Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI) in the restorative justice and community organizing class. She saw a man who had served 25 years in prison sitting next to a retired police commander, “both having come to recognize the importance of acceptance of responsibility on the part of a ‘perpetrator’ and of forgiveness on the part of the ‘victim’ and the community.” “The people I met have solidified my commitment to action,” Truland said. “In the end, I did not want to leave this campus and this community. The experience brought me such peace and such connection and restored my faith in the power of love, forgiveness and reconciliation.” Truland plans to integrate restorative justice into the gender studies courses she teaches, to design introductory programs for criminal justice students, and to network with a classmate who works with victims of domestic violence. Livia Griffith, a director of information technology at nearby James Madison University (JMU), came to the same SPI course after a deeply scarring experience with the U.S. criminal justice system. Five days later, with “renewed hope for transformation of a broken system,” she plans to volunteer with JMU’s Office of Student Accountability and Restorative Practices (directed by Josh Bacon GC ’11). This fall, she also began taking classes towards a graduate certificate in restorative justice at EMU with the goal of “building a community of like-minded individuals to transform the criminal justice system in my community.” The skills taught for 22 years at SPI have always been relevant to people in the United States, says SPI director Bill
Goldberg MA ’01, but now they have a renewed significance in the serious challenges the country faces. “We have 22 years of experience helping people work for justice, peace and good governance in places where governing systems are not working well and where people are in conflict,” Goldberg said. “If we want a world that is built on peace with justice, we need to work effectively, without the expectation of government support, at the community, local and regional levels in every country, including our own.” New offerings at SPI in 2017 included four courses that directly addressed how to manage and transform divisive rhetoric and communication; how to bring polarized communities together and organize for change; and how to recognize and analyze systems of oppression. These courses attracted 54 students (out of 175) from around the United States, as well as global peacebuilders seeking to make progress on similar issues. Griffith says the presence of so many motivated individuals, all seeking positive change and bringing their own experiences and knowledge, primed her own “restoration.” That’s what Goldberg hopes to hear in the coming months from U.S. peacebuilders who attended SPI and now continue to work at transformation of their relationships, communities and organizations. “We intend to bring this same focus to next year’s SPI, with courses that provide long-term solutions and new skills for anyone across the political spectrum who is motivated to political and social action,” he said. “Let us know what you’d like to learn more about.” — LAUREN JEFFERSON
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PROGRAMS
SPI
2017
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PROGRAMS
Summer Peacebuilding Institute 2017 offered 21 courses to approximately 213 peacebuilders from 40 countries. New courses focused on domestic issues, peace education, and building resilience, among others. A course on truth-telling, reconciliation and restorative justice taught by professors Carl Stauffer and Nicolas Rowe drew 24 participants, with more than half from the United States. World-renowned singer and social justice activist Peter Yarrow (large photo, lower left) gave a special concert while on campus for a board meeting of the nonprofit organization Better Angels, which seeks to encourage civil discourse with Americans bitterly divided over politics. PHOTOS BY ANDREW STRACK AND JOAQUIN SOSA
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WOMEN’S PEACEBUILDING LEADERSHIP PROGRAM
KENYA Since 2012, Kenyan women peacebuilders have been bolstering their leadership and peacebuilding practice through enrollment in WPLP. Now, that network of women is active in nearly all regions of Kenya, working for peace both in communities and among national and international actors.
20 7 WAJIR
13 KITALE
9
14
19
ELDORET
ISIOLO
KAKAMEGA KISUMU
1 17 2
18 3
4
5
6
GARISSA
8
NAIROBI 10 11 15 16
CROSS-COUNTRY IMPACT OF WPLP The green circles on the map show the general areas where WPLP graduates are working in Kenya.
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12
MOMBASA
PROGRAMS
1. FATUMA ABASS
5. ESTHER BETT
Garissa
Nairobi
9. JUDITH MANDILLAH
Fatuma is founder and executive director of Pastoralist Girls Initiative, an NGO that works throughout northeast Kenya to support girls and women, empower communities to participate in decision-making processes, and facilitate community-based projects. In 2017, she ran for Garissa County’s Women’s Representative position in Kenya’s national parliament.
Esther works for RODI Kenya supporting rehabilitation, crime prevention, and conflict management programs with actors in the Kenyan criminal justice system. Her work has led to offender reintegration; an increased use of restorative justice and a reduction of violence in schools and communities; and an increase in women leaders. She conducts restorative justice, circle processes, leadership and peacebuilding trainings in the East Africa region.
A probation officer in the High Court of Kenya’s Kakamega offices, Judith manages all community-based offender rehabilitation initiatives in the county. She counsels the offender-client, coordinates community service work, and assists with reintegration/community reconciliation processes. She is an advocate for restorative community-based rehabilitation programs.
Kakamega
13. SARAH NAIBEI
17. SHAMSA OMAR
Kitale
Garissa
Sarah is an administrator with the national government in Trans-Nzoia County, responsible for overseeing national cohesion and ensuring peace and security throughout the county. She is also involved in peace initiatives in her home region of Mt. Elgon, where she is working with key leaders to strengthen community structures to break cycles of violence in the region.
Shamsa is a senior child protection officer at Terres Des Hommes, where she works to enhance comprehensive and holistic child protection programming.
18. ROSELYNE ONUNGA Kisumu
2. MARYAM ABDIKADIR Garissa Maryam’s career has focused on child protection and advocacy for girls and women. She was most recently the programs director at Serve Women and Children Empowerment and Development Agenda. In 2017, Maryam ran for Garissa County’s Women’s Representative position in Kenya’s national parliament.
6. EUNICE GITHAE Nairobi Eunice is a full-time faculty member teaching psychology and peace studies at Kenyatta University, where she earned her PhD. She reviews new curricula for the department and is developing content in the area of education for sustainable peace. Eunice is passionate about youth involvement in peacebuilding and engages youth to participate in peacebuilding processes.
10. EVERLYN MUSEE Nairobi Everlyn’s career has focused on development, women’s empowerment and security. She recently earned her MA at CJP, and plans to pursue doctoral studies in peacebuilding and state security before returning to the nonprofit sector as a consultant specializing in addressing radicalization and state responses to violence.
14. RUTH NALYANYA Eldoret Ruth is a professor at Rift Valley Technical Training Institute, where she founded a peace club to mitigate negative ethnic stereotypes and to model inclusivity and tolerance on campus. She has extended her peacebuilding activities throughout western Kenya by founding an NGO, Peace Path Development Initiative. In that capacity, Ruth meets monthly with marginalized women to address gender-based issues and alternative livelihoods initiatives.
As CEO of Local Capacities for Peace International, Roselyne coordinates projects on electoral security and peacebuilding. She collaborates with community stakeholders at local and government levels and trains community members in violence prevention, conflict early warning, and relationship building between the community and the police. She is earning a PhD in peace and conflict studies through Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology.
19. SHAMSA SHEIKH Isiolo County
3. RUKIYA ABDULRAHMAN
11. RACHEL MUTAI
Nairobi Rukiya is a program officer for Conflict Dynamics International. Her work focuses on political accommodation within and between federal Somali states, and local peacebuilding and community reconciliation work through district peace committees.
4. FATUMA AHMED Nairobi Previously employed with National Democratic Institute, Fatuma undertakes consultancy assignments involving women’s empowerment trainings, gender-based violence, and women in leadership, primarily in south-central Somalia.
7. SULI GUHAD Wajir Suli works for Mercy Corps as a gender team leader with the Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters program. Her work has included media campaigns on girls’ education, women in leadership, and decision-making through the Wajir community radio station; launching of a gender strategy program to address gender gaps in county government; and trainings on gender-based violence and gender mainstreaming.
Nairobi Rachel designs training curricula and leads peace and conflict mitigation work in the Rift Valley with African Leadership and Reconciliation Ministries. She regularly conducts regional trainings on women’s leadership, trauma awareness and resilience, most recently in Burundi.
15. CATHERINE NJERU Nairobi Catherine is a gender specialist at the International Peace Support Training Centre, Kenya’s premier peacekeeping training school. She integrates gender components into curricula and advises on security sector reforms to fully implement UNSCR 1325 and related resolutions. She is also implementing a program with women from Marsabit, Nairobi and Mombasa counties and the Kenya-Ethiopia border to enhance their capacity to participate in peacebuilding processes.
Mombasa
8. CAROL MAKANDA Nairobi Carol‘s consultancy focuses on integrating restorative justice and trauma awareness into peacebuilding work. Examples include trauma support for survivors of the 2015 Garissa University attack, trainings for communities in conflict, and the drafting of a national curriculum on countering violent extremism and radicalization for schools. Carol is also a passionate mentor of budding women peacebuilders.
20. NAEMA (NIMO) SOMO Wajir
12. VIOLET MUTHIGA Violet is the CEO of Sauti Ya Wanawake Pwani (Women’s Voices), an NGO working in six counties in the coast. During this election year, Violet’s work has focused on supporting women political aspirants and educating voters, with the aim of increasing the number of women elected into political leadership. She has also played an active role in lobbying the security apparatus to ensure a peaceful environment for women voters.
Shamsa works with ACT!’s electoral conflict and violence mitigation program, where she trains and mobilizes communities to prevent electionrelated violence. She is involved in training community based conflict management panels in mediation and developing peace messaging for local radio stations.
As Wajir county attorney, Nimo has drafted county laws, policies and agreements; advised the governor; and helped to create the community-based Land Disputes Tribunal. Nimo is completing a master’s degree in peace, governance and security from Africa Nazarene University.
16. BEATRICE NZOVU-OUMA Nairobi Beatrice manages the Kenya Program for Life and Peace Institute, which involves exploring peaceful coexistence between residents of vulnerable neighborhoods through dialogue; sensitizing at-risk youth to the role they can play in peaceful elections; using dialogue to forge improved social relations between Somalis and non-Somalis; and promoting national identity through dialogue and policy intervention in Garissa.
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WPLP GRADUATES IN KENYA FORM WOMEN’S PEACEBUILDING NETWORK Although the roughly two dozen Kenyan women in the room worked in diverse contexts across the country, they had much in common. All of them had studied at EMU – primarily through the Women’s Peacebuilding Leadership Program (WPLP) – and they all shared a belief that their peacebuilding work offered hope for the future. To strengthen that hope, at an October 2016 conference funded by USAID in Nairobi, they formed the Daima Amani Women’s Network (DAWN). Daima Amani means “everlasting peace” in Swahili. “Our vision is to contribute to the peace in Kenya through our collective peacebuilding skills and experiences,” said Shamsa Sheikh GC ‘17, DAWN’s program coordinator and WPLP participant. “[We] saw a gap, in that there were many women in Kenya doing peacebuilding and had either gone through the WPLP program or were Center for Justice and Peacebuilding alumni, but we did not know much about each other’s work.” Since DAWN’s founding, Sheikh said, its members have been working on everything from organizational logistics to social media engagement to brainstorming ideas for campaigns related to women’s issues and peacebuilding in Kenya. “Our hope for the network is that it grows as a space where a diverse
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From left: Eunice Githae GC ‘15, Faisa Loyaan (past SPI participant) and Carol Makanda GC ’15 talk with Beatrice Elachi, a Kenyan senator, at the founding conference of DAWN. PHOTO COURTESY OF WINEX MEDIA
group of women of all ages can be involved in building a peaceful Kenya,” she added. According to Esther Bett, GC ’15, DAWN treasurer and another alumna of WPLP, network members are continuing to pursue peacebuilding work in their own areas of practice. “We participate in public forums and use any opportunity we get to preach peace,” said Bett. Other DAWN leaders include Chairperson Carol Makanda GC ’15 (WPLP) and Secretary Vincent Kiplagat. Kiplagat is on the staff of the Daima Initiatives for Peace and Development (DiPaD), an organization founded and led by Doreen Ruto, MA ’06, until her death in 2016. DiPaD – WPLP’s local partner in Kenya – now serves as DAWN’s organizational home, offering advice, logistical support and other assistance to the recently formed network. According to former WPLP Director Leda Werner MA ‘12, the newly formed group has potential to have significant impact in Kenya. “They are in the middle-level civil society space, so they can transmit messages of peace to the grassroots and work on community-based peacebuilding initiatives there, and they can also reach up to the policy level and be a stakeholder in national conversations, thereby bringing a peacebuilding perspective into government policies and playing a role in shaping those conversations,” Werner said. — ANDREW JENNER
PROGRAMS
ZEHR INSTITUTE FOR RESTORATIVE JUSTICE
MAXIMIZING RESTORATIVE JUSTICE IMPACT Institute helps funder determine future resource allocation
IN A WIDESPREAD, FAST-MOVING FIELD such as restorative justice (RJ), how does a major grant-funding organization discern where to allot funds? One answer: engage with the Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice on a comprehensive nation-wide strategic listening process, followed by a convening of leaders in the field. From December 2016 through May 2017, listening sessions were hosted in regions across the United States: northern California, Minnesota, The Navajo Nation in New Mexico and Arizona, Baltimore/Washington D.C./Virginia, and British Columbia in Canada. The sessions – led by Sonya Shah and co-facilitators – gathered approximately 135 participants to gain a ground-level understanding of how RJ has been developed, is practiced and has evolved regionally. Shah is an RJ practitioner, professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and co-founder and director of the Ahimsa Collective. In April, 12 leaders from a variety of venues where RJ is practiced gathered in the Shenandoah Valley to review the findings and to collaborate on building a framework for a cohesive, impactful and long-lasting restorative justice social
Restorative justice leaders from around the United States gather to discuss information collected in regional listening sessions. PHOTO BY CODY TROYER
movement. The group also presented suggestions regarding how the funder can “best use its allotted resources to maximize the impact of its funding and capacitation efforts in support of a durable Restorative Justice movement for the future,” according to a post-event summary. Framing session participants included Dr. Carl Stauffer MA ’02, co-director of the Zehr Institute; Shah, the lead facilitator; and several co-facilitators of the regional listening sessions: Lauren Abramson: (co-facilitator, Maryland) founder and executive director, Community Conferencing Center, Baltimore, Maryland; Catherine Bargen MA ’08: (co-facilitator, British Columbia) community program manager and restorative justice coordinator, of Public Safety and Solicitor General, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; Ashlee George: (co-facilitator, California) senior program associate, Restorative Justice Project, Impact Justice, Oakland, California; Sarah King MA ’17: (co-facilitator, Minnesota and project assistant) Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice, CJP; Robert Yazzie: (co-facilitator, Navajo Nation) professor, Navajo Technical University, and retired chief justice of the Navajo Nation,Window Rock, Arizona. Other participants came from the fields of corrections, law enforcement, higher education, domestic violence, youth activism and K-12 education, media, community organizing and politics. The report is being finalized. The funding organization choses to remain anonymous. — LAUREN JEFFERSON
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RJ RETREAT BRINGS TOGETHER LAW ENFORCEMENT PRACTITIONERS Representatives from six police departments across the country attended a law enforcement retreat on restorative justice in November 2016 near Harrisonburg, Virginia. The retreat was co-hosted by the Harrisonburg (Virginia) Police Department and the Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice. Agencies from California, Illinois, Massachusetts and Virginia were represented by executive leadership, who have led or continued to lead implementation of restorative justice practices in their respective jurisdictions. Lieutenant Kurt Boshart, who founded and directed Harrisonburg Police Department’s restorative justice program, organized the event. Boshart has since retired from a 28-year career. The goal of the retreat was to build networks, share resources and gain insights. Topics of discussion included personnel training, program sustainability, collaboration with faith-based and other community groups, funding, and use of restorative justice in crisis situations. Participants agreed that utilizing restorative justice principles – being proactive, using good communication skills, building relationships and social capital by empowering and including community members – called for a holistic culture shift from “the top down and back up,” from new recruits to administration, said Chief Joe Garza, Reedley (Calif.) Police Department. At the same time, they agreed that many police departments, and individual officers, are already doing this kind of outreach, though perhaps under a different name. What would be optimal, however, is systemic buy-in and a nationwide professional commitment to this different kind of accountability, they said.
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Participants in the restorative justice retreat for law enforcement held Nov . 11-13 in Harrisonburg came from four states. PHOTO BY CODY TROYER
“One model does not fit each and every community,” said Bedford (Mass.) Chief Robert Bongiorno, who partners with 14 other police departments through the non-profit Communities for Restorative Justice (C4RJ). [Jennifer Larson Sawin MA ’04, former executive director of C4RJ, is still involved with the organization as an advisor. She attended the retreat as well.] The traditional penal system causes irreparable harm to communities, participants said, while restorative justice processes, if done correctly, reduce the frequency and severity of future offences by keeping the offender in the community (in employment, in school and with family) and involving stakeholders in repairing the damages. The process is sometimes called “restorative justice diversion,” because the pre-charge referral and subsequent voluntary participation agreement from the offender shifts the case out of the traditional legal system. Youth and adults complete an accountability process that is “much tougher than going to prison,” Bongiorno says. Several retreat participants reported being initially distrustful of this process, only to share transformative experiences when observing the benefits. “Six years ago, I would have said everyone in this room is crazy, but now I say, ‘Why didn’t we figure this out 25 years ago?’” said Garza. He was accompanied by Officer Marc Ediger and former police officer John Swenning, now a restorative justice facilitator with West Coast Mennonite Central Committee. The three men collaborate as part of an initiative called the Reedley Peace Building Initiative. “We don’t become police officers so that we can incarcerate people,” said Vanessa Westley, a 25-year veteran of the Chicago Police Force. Participants planned to work towards formalizing their association, actively promoting their successful restorative justice programs, and networking more broadly among colleagues to share resources and encourage implementation of new programs. — LAUREN JEFFERSON
PROGRAMS
VISITING CJP SCHOLAR PLANS RESTORATIVE JUSTICE SEMINAR FOR BRAZILIAN PRACTITIONERS IN OCTOBER In the late 1990s, Brazilian judge Isabel Lima traveled to a conference in New Zealand to talk about her work with juvenile offenders. After her presentation, an audience member asked if Lima was using something called “restorative justice.” It was the first time she’d heard the term. Conversations ensued, connections were made, and Lima flew back home with the feeling that something important had just happened. “It was a definitive moment,” she recalls. “I felt that restorative justice would be my path.” It’s a path that eventually brought her to become a visiting scholar at CJP in spring 2017 and a participant at the Summer Peacebuilding Institute. What first excited Lima about restorative justice was the way in which its principles aligned with the holistic, community-centered approach to the law that she’d been developing as a judge. This mindset was inspired by her long commitment to Catholic-affiliated human rights movements and her previous career as a nurse. The “top-down” way in which the law treated individual offenders and the broader community particularly bothered her. Lima has kept working in restorative justice since her retirement, including a two-year period in Timor-Leste, where she helped draft the country’s first juvenile justice law. She has also been a professor at the Catholic University of Salvador in Bahia, Brazil, for 18 years. Along the way, Lima grew to admire EMU’s leadership in the fields of restorative justice and peacebuilding, and visited the university’s Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice for a week in 2016. While at CJP last spring and summer, Lima has been laying the groundwork for a week-long conference and retreat from Oct. 23-27. The 25 to 30 expected participants, representing
Isabel Lima, a former judge from Brazil active in restorative justice, has helped facilitate an October 2017 conference at Eastern Mennonite University for fellow practitioners from around Brazil. Lima was a visiting scholar at CJP in the spring 2017 and a participant at the Summer Peacebuilding Institute. PHOTO BY ANDREW STRACK
Brazil’s legal system, academia and civil society, will meet with Zehr Institute co-directors Howard Zehr and Carl Stauffer, CJP professor Johonna Turner, and leaders of local organizations working with restorative justice. Among Lima’s colleagues who plan to attend is Leoberto Brancher, a juvenile court judge in Caxias do Sul. Brancher plays a key role in the coordination of several public service centers dedicated to conflict resolution and prevention as well as community-building. Established in 2010, the program has been managed by the city government since 2014. The city also has peace commissions working in its jails, healthcare system and its most violent neighborhood, and a “peace volunteers” program that has trained nearly 1,000 people in the use of circle processes. Of those, nearly 100 have received additional training to become certified to resolve conflicts in their communities. Brazil is “one of the most dynamic venues for restorative justice development these days,” says Zehr, who has been invited to lecture in Brazil several times. “We at CJP are honored to have been asked to further assist these exciting developments.” Lima hopes to see a steering committee formed in the fall that can continue to coordinate collaboration between restorative justice practitioners in Brazil and CJP. “We are very motivated and very committed to restorative justice,” Lima said. “At this event, we will be able to strategize together, learn from those at CJP who are really grounded in this work, and look forward to a sustainable future for this movement.” — ANDREW JENNER
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PROGRAMS
From left: Samantha “Sam” Lawler with The Conciliation Project actors Shelby Marie Edwards and Jeremy Morris and fellow CJP graduate student Lenore Bajare-Dukes. PHOTO BY ANDREW STRACK
MASTER’S DEGREE PROGRAMS
MAPPING TRUTH-TELLING National map will help organizations to network their truth and reconciliation efforts
LENORE BAJARE-DUKES AND SAMANTHA LAWLER, thenMA candidates, spent their spring 2017 semester practicum with Richmond-based social justice theater company The Conciliation Project. For both women, the experience of learning about truth-telling practices with an accomplished troupe of actors and practitioners was deeply moving. Bajare-Dukes also contextualized her learnings by aiding in a mapping project of truth-telling, memorialization and reparations organizations around the country (fellow graduate student Jennifer Chi Lee also contributed). Jodie Geddes MA ’16, a community organizer with Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth (RJOY), supervised the research, with help from other graduate students from University of California, Berkeley, and University of Notre Dame. The work was jointly supported by RJOY and CJP, with funding provided by the Telemachus Foundation. The mapping project aims to generate synergy, cross-pollination, momentum and movement-building through the connection of many local and regional efforts. “We want to
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document these community-based participatory initiatives and bring them together into a network, ultimately to host a national convening or create a center that would act as a resource and hub for the multiple local processes going on around the nation,” said Fania Davis, executive director of RJOY, while presenting on the topic to a Summer Peacebuilding Institute class. One focus of the mapping is to foster and honor the collective wisdom already working on this challenging process within specific local contexts. “There’s a lot of wisdom in communities to say what does truth and reconciliation look like? What does racial healing look like?” Geddes said. “We are looking at what communities are doing, what they name as their needs, and how we can begin to support them?” Both women urged that the hard work of naming historical and institutionalized violence against African Americans needs to begin now. [Their presentation occurred before the events of Charlottesville in August 2017.] “There is an African proverb that says a finger pointing also has three fingers pointing back at you,” Geddes says. “We live in a post-genocidal and post-slavery land and we have done nothing in all of these centuries to repair that harm. We insist that other countries do that work. A process that is done well names the power and privilege and violence that exists and has existed. We need to name the violence that perpetuates against the people of this nation.” Stay tuned for more coverage of this project and CJP’s involvement with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation enterprise on the CJP website. — LAUREN JEFFERSON
PROGRAMS
RECENT CJP GRAD PRODUCES DOCUMENTARY HUMANIZING SYRIAN REFUGEES, RETURNS TO CAMPUS AS TEACHING FELLOW By the time Fulbright Scholar Myriam Aziz arrived from Lebanon to start her master’s degree at CJP in fall 2015, the U.S. presidential primary was already underway. Aziz was dismayed to hear some Republican candidates wanted to make the vetting process of Syrian refugees even more rigorous and restrictive. “I had experienced firsthand who these refugees are and the journeys they had been on,” says Aziz, who spent two years working with Syrian refugees in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley, as a registration assistant and a senior resettlement assistant with the UNHCR, a refugee agency. After an ineffectual lobbying visit to a local politician, she began thinking about other ways by which she might more effectively introduce Syrian refugees to an American public that often misunderstands them. With a grant from CJP, Aziz returned to Lebanon in December 2016, where she filmed interviews with Syrian refugees and created a 25-minute documentary. “When you think of Syrians, you think of us as terrorists, as burdens,” says one young man in the film. “We are fleeing war. We are attempting to start new lives. Why would we create more problems for ourselves?” Aziz is now pursuing a number of ways to make sure the documentary is seen, including possible showings with congressional staff in Washington D.C., in hopes of increasing the number of Syrian refugees settled in the U.S. “They need us more than ever, because they’re unable to be here to talk themselves,” she said. “If anyone in the United States would like to collaborate or use this documentary, please don’t hesitate to contact me.” As that work continues, Aziz has returned to campus to become CJP’s first-ever teaching fellow. During a one-year fellowship, Aziz will teach in the undergraduate peacebuilding and development program, assist with graduate-level CJP courses, and help peacebuilding and conflict studies professor Gloria Rhodes to develop a training program on conflict resolution in the workplace. “Like many of our students, Myriam arrived at CJP with a good deal of field experience,” said Jayne Seminare Docherty, CJP academic programs director. “In working with Gloria Rhodes as a teaching assistant, she found she had a gift for teaching as well as a passion for it. Myriam also proved herself to be an able scholar with a flair for reflecting on the realities of working in the field.” The arrangement will offer benefits to all involved, added Docherty, with Aziz gaining experience as an instructor, undergraduates learning from a recent CJP grad with distinctive field experience, and CJP receiving assistance developing the new training program. “If this works well, we would like to create a yearly Teaching Fellow position for a recent CJP graduate,” Docherty said. After finishing the teaching fellowship at EMU, Aziz plans to eventually pursue a PhD and then, a career in the Lebanese Foreign Service. — ANDREW JENNER
Myriam Aziz MA ’17 is CJP’s new Teaching Fellow this year. She brings experience working with UNHCR and Syrian refugees in her native Lebanon. An arts-based peacebuilding grant from CJP last year helped fund the production of Aziz’s documentary about Syrian refugees, which she hopes to show in Washington D.C. and elsewhere in the coming months. PHOTO BY JOAQUIN SOSA
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FEATURES
CREATIVE CHANGE AT CJP NEW FACES, SAME COMMITMENT TO INNOVATION CJP innovates. Co-founding director John Paul Lederach challenged conflict resolution advocates to focus on relationships. Howard Zehr pioneered restorative justice. Barry Hart connected trauma healing to peacebuilding. Lisa Schirch centered ritual as a tool for transforming conflicts. I challenged the efficacy of “getting to yes” for complex conflicts. Gloria Rhodes is connecting personal awareness with skill-building to foster conflict competency. Carl Stauffer is promoting restorative justice as a social movement. Amy Potter Czajkowski and David Anderson Hooker used the Strategies for Trauma and Resilience framework to write a manual on transforming historical harms. But all these great innovations did not help in Charlottesville. We can no longer turn away from the challenge of transforming a culture that promotes violence and refuses to address historical harms. Fortunately, CJP hired the next generation of innovators two years ago. Johonna Turner and Tim Seidel will start teaching Foundations of Justice and Peacebuilding II in spring 2018. We expect their blend of cultural studies, restorative justice, community organizing, nonviolent resistance, and policy advocacy to yield the next CJP practice innovations.
Professors Tim Seidel (above) and Johonna Turner (below).
HOW DOES CJP CREATE A LIBERATING LEARNING SPACE? Many graduates rave about the experience of CJP as an authentic community. The faculty and staff embrace and work with the whole person for a reason. A peacebuilder who is not grounded, centered and self-aware is likely to do more harm than good. Our students are not heads on a stick, all brain with no body, emotions or spirit. In seeing our students as whole people, we also can’t ignore the trauma they bring into the classroom. And we can’t just talk about topics like injustice, violence, war, rape and racism without recognizing the trauma this can induce. For the first time this fall, Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) program director Katie Mansfield spent a day of student orientation teaching everyone to recognize the ways that trauma responses can show up in the classroom. The faculty and students concluded the training by making some agreements about ways that everyone can do their part to create a learning community that cares and learns together. — JAYNE SEMINARE DOCHERTY, ACADEMIC PROGRAMS DIRECTOR
Katie Mansfield, director of the Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) program. PHOTOS BY ANDREW STRACK
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FOCUS
FROM AROUND THE GLOBE, LET’S CONNECT! Find colleagues, share insights, collaborate on projects, and mentor our current students. Join our “Alumni of The Center for Justice & Peacebuilding, EMU” Facebook group. Join the “CJPeers” LinkedIn group, open only to CJP alumni, and select Eastern Mennonite University Center for Justice and Peacebuilding in the education section of your LinkedIn profile. Visit the alumni section of the CJP homepage emu.edu/cjp/alumni and update your alumni profile.
Contact Peacebuilding Network Coordinator Diana Tovar to share your journey and/or discuss how you might share your experiences, wisdom and advice with current students.
DIANA TOVAR • diana.tovarrojas@emu.edu • 540-432-4491
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“WE SUPPORT CJP BECAUSE THE PROGRAMS ADDRESS THE MOST DESPERATE GLOBAL NEED WITH PRACTICAL, INSPIRING TRAINING AND INSIGHTS BASED ON FOUNDATIONAL BELIEF IN GOD’S LOVE FOR ALL.”
WHY DO YOU SUPPORT CJP? Recently I asked a handful of CJP supporters why they give to CJP. I think you may be as amazed by the breadth and depth of their responses as I am! Belief in the mission. “Education is key to changing the world. And when you educate people in peacebuilding, they can change the world wherever they are ... whether it’s in the United States or around the world, working in schools, small communities, cities or nations.” Big impact. “One of my most important mentors said, ‘Facilitate the edges and back of the room. That is where the wisdom resides.’ I figure I should look at where I invest my money for real change in the world the same way. CJP is small in size and resides on the margins of the Washington D.C. power center. But the program and its graduates are mighty in wisdom and powerful in their impact on the world. A great investment of my resources.” Transformational experience at CJP. “I am who I am today because of CJP. The courses were both practical and inspiring, the professors were so dedicated to walking with me, and my classmates shared their journeys and wisdom. I am so grateful for the education and the values that CJP gave me.” To honor an inspirational peacebuilder. “I know personally or have been acquainted with several individuals, including the late Tom Fox, who have studied at or otherwise been associated with CJP. I tremendously admire and respect their personal life commitment to on-the-ground peacemaking and reconciliation and feel it is important that I support in a tangible way what the CJP is doing to empower people like Tom.”
To walk the talk. “I think of the phrase ‘put your money where your mouth is.’ We talk peacebuilding, we try to act as peacemakers, but are we also willing to put our dollars into making it happen? Every day our tax dollars go to support war and violence. Can we send a different kind of message with contributions toward peacebuilding around the world?” Motivated by faith. “The lyrics to this hymn speak to me: ‘In Christ there is no East or West/ In Him no South or North/ But one great fellowship of love,/ Throughout the whole wide earth.’ My contribution to CJP is my contribution to loving the whole wide earth. CJP has the potential to grow people who become the hands and feet of Jesus around the world.” Does one or more of these reasons resonate with you? If so, I invite you to join our community of supporters and make a gift today. Thank you! LINDSAY E. MARTIN Associate Director of Development for CJP lindsay.e.martin@emu.edu 540-432-4581
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THANKS TO OUR GENEROUS DONORS! FOR FISCAL YEAR 2016-17, ENDING JUNE 30, 2017
PARTNERS IN PEACEBUILDING ($1,000+ TO CJP ANNUAL FUND) Anonymous (6) Emily & James Akerson Richard Alper & Kate Herrod Rick Augsburger & Jane Rutt Rose Ann & Gerald Baer Murl Baker Robert & Elva Bare Ian & Beverly Birky Brenda Bowman Lena & Michael Brown David & Martha Brubaker E. Lynn Brubaker & Debra Hutchinson Hero Brzw David Bucher & Sharon W. Hoover Joel & Clair Cannon Eldon & Esther Christophel Jayne Docherty & Roger Foster John & Sandra Drescher-Lehman Erma Edwards Bill & Diane Elliot John & Kathryn Fairfield Peter & Virginia Fitzner Bruce & Jeanette Flaming Margaret & Donald Foth Joseph & Barbara Gascho Bob Gillette Stan & Susan Godshall Carol Hess & Nelson Hoover Herb & Joanne High Kevin & Cynthia Hockman-Chupp Dave & Cathleen Hockman-Wert Liz & Ralph Hofmeister
Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Bob & Eloise Hostetler Alden & Louise Hostetter Helen & Elvin Hurst Ruth & Timothy Jost Lois Kenagy Phoebe Kilby & Barry Carpenter Kline May Realty Allison Kokkoros Norman & Rhoda Kraus John & Martha Kreider Bruce & Paula Brunk Kuhns Wayne & Kathleen Kurtz Jennifer & Gregory E. Larson-Sawin Nancy Lee J. E. & Emma Lehman Ruby Lehman Ruth & Emerson Lesher Allen & Sara Jane Lind Joe & Constance Longacher Joseph & Rachel Martin Lois M. Martin Tom & Barbara Melby Herb & Sarah Myers Larry & Janet Newswanger Elmo & Ella Pascale James & Marian Payne Sherri & Gary Peters Alice & Norman G. Raiford Marvin & Darlene Rohrer-Meck Henry & Charlotte Graber Rosenberger James & Gloria Horst Rosenberger Lynn & Kathleen Roth Clarence Rutt Verne & Carol Schirch Melinda Scrivner Sewickley Presbyterian Church Jerry & Ethel Shank Ruth & Ray Shepherd Margaret Squier & Larry Levine
IN MEMORY OF MJ SHARP ‘05 Michael J. (M.J.) Sharp ‘05 took to heart EMU’s mission to serve and lead in a global context. His work with Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) and the United Nations took him all over the world, building bridges between people in conflict. On March 12, 2017, M.J. was ambushed and murdered by unknown assailants in the Democratic Republic of Congo. As a UN expert on armed groups, he was on his way to meet with leaders of a new militia group in central DRC. M.J. had previously worked for MCC as Eastern Congo coordinator, collaborating with the Congolese Protestant Council of Churches’ peace and reconciliation program to convince rebel fighters to lay down their weapons and return home. The M.J. Sharp Endowed Scholarship Fund will honor M.J.’s memory by providing need-based aid to CJP graduate students with priority given to students from the Democratic Republic of Congo. We welcome your contributions to this scholarship at emu.edu/giving/endow/mjsharp.
Donald & Mary Sundberg Stirling Barbara & David Swan Telemachus Foundation Vaughn & Inga Troyer United Service Foundation Inc. Lois & Paul Unruh Valley Friends Meeting Samuel H. Weaver Mary & Raymond Whalen Claire Whiting Calvin & Sharon Yoder Marilyn Yoder Marshall & Julie Yoder Martha Yoder Scott Yoder & Lindsay Thrasher Pearl E Zehr Donald & Priscilla Ziegler Cheryl Zook Roger & Evelyn zumFelde
DONORS TO OTHER CJP FUNDS OF $1,000+ Anonymous (2) Richard Alper & Kate Herrod Alper Family Foundation Inc. Daryl & Cynthia Byler Klingstein Foundation Shorsh Mustafa Rodney & Miriam Nafziger James & Marian Payne Norm Rittenhouse Feryl & Connie Souder Kris Stoesz Telemachus Foundation The Austin E. Knowlton Foundation Jay & Nancy Yoder Howard & Ruby Zehr
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1994—Present
GLOBAL IMPACT
Master’s or graduate certificate in conflict transformation: 603 alumni in 78 countries Academic and non-degree training at EMU SPI - Summer Peacebuilding Institute: More than 3,075 alumni in 124 countries STAR - Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience: More than 5,000 participants from 62 countries Peacebuilding institutes modeled on EMU’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute: Located in 9 countries – Bosnia-Herzegovina, Canada, Ghana, Fiji, Mozambique, Northeast Asia, Philippines, United States, Zambia
Our vision is to create a critical mass of peace and justice leaders in every region of the world who have the skills to transform their communities, organizations, and nations. Evidence of CJP’s impact can be seen daily in the work of our students, graduates and our programs.
APPLY TODAY • emu.edu/cjp • cjp@emu.edu • 540-432-4490