Peacebuilder 2018-19 - Alumni Magazine of EMU's Center for Justice and Peacebuilding

PEACEBUILDER THE MAGAZINE OF THE CENTER FOR JUSTICE AND PEACEBUILDING AT EASTERN MENNONITE UNIVERSITY

2018-19

PEACEBUILDER 2018-19

FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

BIRTHING VISION 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 J. DARYL BYLER / CJP Executive director CJP MANAGEMENT TEAM J. DARYL BYLER JAYNE SEMINARE DOCHERTY WILLIAM GOLDBERG PATIENCE KAMAU HANNAH KELLEY STAFF LAUREN JEFFERSON / Editor-in-chief JON STYER / Creative director ANDREW STRACK / Photo manager CHRISTOPHER CLYMER KURTZ / Staff writer MACSON MCGUIGAN / Staff photographer JOSHUA LYONS / Web designer

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

I RECENTLY HEARD Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP) student Maha Mehanna tell her family’s moving story of being Palestinian refugees in Gaza.

Maha was one of several panelists invited to a post-production discussion of the play “The Vagrant Trilogy,” performed by the Mosaic Theater Company of [Washington] D.C. She described the limited choices – few of them good – she and her family have had living under military occupation. But despite the overwhelming odds, Maha holds onto hope.

And she continues to build relationships with Israelis to work for a future of justice, peace and security for both peoples.

Maha’s experience reminds me of another Middle Easterner – the Apostle Paul – who wrote that suffering gives birth to resilience. Resilience gives birth to character. And character gives birth to hope (Romans 5:3-4). Hope, we know, is also vision.

Many CJP students come to us from situations of suffering and trauma – political oppression, war, poverty and the legacy of enslavement. But theirs are not stories of defeat and despair. Rather, their stories are of resilience and hope. The hardships they have experienced have given birth to powerful visions for justice and healing. Indeed, the most compelling visions are birthed from the deepest, darkest struggles in life.

In this issue of Peacebuilder, you will read many stories of resilience and hope – as CJP alumni engage a broken world. Despite encountering racism in Anabaptist institutions, Iris de León-Hartshorn has “stuck it out” with her brothers and sisters in Christ because of her vision to be part of God’s reconciling mission in the world (pages 4-5). Ja Nan Lahtaw’s passion to bring change to her war-torn country is rooted in “seeing the suffering and despair of people affected by Myanmar’s ongoing conflicts” (p. 21). And Tecla Namachanja Wanjala’s “new-dawn” dream of healing for Kenya grows from the country’s massive trauma (p. 31).

Still, getting students to Eastern Mennonite University is not without challenges.

Visas are not the only issue. Graduate education is expensive and many of those who want to study at CJP do not have adequate financial resources to cover the costs.

We are launching a major endowment campaign to boost our scholarship offerings.

Our goal is to raise an additional $5 million by 2020. Will you help us offer more peacebuilders the tools necessary to birth visions of healing and hope in their communities?

J. Daryl Byler Executive Director

CONTENTS

FEATURES

2 ‘PLAY TOGETHER, LIVE TOGETHER’ Andrew Daniels MA ‘16 teaches the sport he loves and a vision for the future to youth in Ireland.

6 IRAQIS CREATE PEACE CURRICULUM 26

A multi-year project concludes with a CJP-facilitated training for Iraqi professors developing a peacebuilding curriculum.

ON THE COVER A close-up of a collaborative art project created during the opening ceremonies of Summer Peacebuilding Institute 2017.

PHOTO BY ANDREW STRACK

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FROM THE FIELD

PROGRAMS

16

This anti-violence coordinator in New York City focuses on family dynamics.

WOMEN’S PEACEBUILDING LEADERSHIP PROGRAM

12 MEET THE STUDENTS

18

Photos and bios of first-year graduate students.

SUMMER PEACEBUILDING INSTITUTE

14 YEAR IN REVIEW 4

View CJP program highlights in the United States and around the world.

22 ZEHR INSTITUTE

25 STRATEGIES FOR TRAUMA AWARENESS AND RESILIENCE

28 MA DEGREE PROGRAMS 8

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‘PLAY TOGETHER, LIVE TOGETHER’ Sport sets the stage for relationship-building in conflict areas.

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PHOTOS COURTESY OF PEACEPLAYERS

FEATURES

ANDREW DANIELS HAD A HUNCH there was some connection between his graduate studies in conflict transformation at CJP and the sport he’d loved for most of his life. But it wasn’t until his second season coaching a high school basketball team in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia that he saw, very clearly, the need for applied conflict transformation in the athletics context.

In the midst of the heated 2016 presidential campaign season, politically-derived tensions naturally entered into the school environment and trickled down into team dynamics, challenging the boys’ ability to work together. “Some boys supported one candidate in pretty vocal ways and their language, as well as that from other students, made teammates feel like they were being targeted,” Daniels said.

Thinking through possible approaches, he realized that structured dialogue in a calm and supportive environment could potentially help mediate the situation.

Daniels led the team through weekly circle processes, beginning with “our values and relationships,” he said. “As the weeks went on, we got more into what people were saying and how that made them feel. It made a difference in how the athletes interacted with each other.”

That nexus between peacebuilding and sports led Daniels to pursue professional work in the field upon graduation in 2016. Sport for development, modeled on the ideals of the Olympic Movement, uses athletics participation as a means of enabling cooperation and peacebuilding among both children and adults. The approach has staunch believers and dissenters around the globe.

Daniels is now an international fellow with the Belfast-based program of PeacePlayers, which combines sports programming with peace education and leadership development for youth in communities in conflict. PeacePlayers also has programs in Cyprus, the Middle East, South Africa, and the United States.

“I do have a lot more optimism than I had before, because now I can see an alternative reality,” Daniels said. “I’ve seen kids from conflict areas, who have had really hard lives, with their arms around each other, building friendships.”

As a project coordinator in South Belfast, Daniels oversees programs for youth ages 7-18 with the aim of bringing together residents of starkly segregated neighborhoods. Ninety percent of public housing is divided along sectarian lines, and only 7 percent of pupils attend integrated schools, according to PeacePlayers research.

“That means many Catholic kids have not set foot in a Protestant school, even if it’s only a few miles away, nor have they really had the opportunity to interact with Protestant kids,” Daniels said. “You can imagine the long-term effects through adulthood of this deep sectarian segregation.”

In a “twinning” program for the youngest residents, a Catholic and Protestant school pair up for 12 weeks. Daniels and a team of coaches conduct introductory sessions at the separate schools during the first week. Over the next two weeks, each student group visits its partner school for a welcoming cere-

mony and tour. “They see a lot of similarities, of course, with their own schools, which helps to set the stage for relationship-building,” Daniels said.

The following weekly sessions of about two hours are hosted at a neutral site. A rigorous set of “mixer” exercises helps to break down barriers and create integrated teams, which then rotate through 30-minute sessions devoted alternately to basketball skills that demand teamwork and communication and peace education curriculum about topics such as stereotypes, peer influence, symbolism, prejudice and discrimination.

“The main objective is to have fun and give the kids an opportunity to interact, and the curriculum is really secondary,” Daniels said. “One of the program mottos is ‘Kids who can learn to play together can learn to live together.’”

Given the space and freedom, kids gravitate towards each other, Daniels said, “even if what they have in common is that they both dislike basketball.”

Daniels said the change from the first meeting, “when the Catholic kids are on one side of the circle and the Protestant kids are on the other side, just looking at each other,” to the final meeting is “amazing.” The bonding exercises nudge students together, but it’s the willingness of the children to overcome stereotypes and prejudice that Daniels finds inspiring.

“One day, early in a program when the two school groups had just met, I noticed one boy keeping to himself, and I was thinking, ‘How can I get him more engaged?’ I got distracted for a bit, and the next time I looked over, he’d found a kid from the other school group who was also kind of shy, and they bonded over that. By the end of the program, when they had to say their final goodbyes, instead of a high-five, they shared a hug,” he said. “That’s the kind of thing that makes me keep going.”

Daniels also works with Champions 4 Peace, a leadership program offered by invitation to youth ages 14-18 who have been through the twinning program, as well as Belfast Interface League, an evening and after-school program that offers opportunities to play basketball and explore peace education at more advanced levels.

In the gym and in the classroom these last 10 months, Daniels still finds the experience of living and working in Ireland “surreal.” He is walking in the footsteps of one of his heroes: His grandfather, now living in Daniels’ hometown of Roanoke, Virginia, is a Belfast native who immigrated to the United States in the ‘50s.

“I grew up hearing my grandfather tell stories of the violence in the Ardoyne district. He didn’t exactly have a peaceful time growing up,” Daniels said. “Here I am living in the same city, helping to work on some of the same issues he experienced. I like to think he’s proud of that.”

Along with a dream of peace for Belfast, he has one more, he said: a walk through the city with his grandfather.

—LAUREN JEFFERSON

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IRIS DE LEÓN-HARTSHORN MA ’05 has served Mennonite Central Committee (1996-2007) and Mennonite Church USA (2007-present) in various leadership roles. Previously the church’s director of transformative peacemaking, the Portland, Oregon, resident is now its associate executive director for operations, a new position that encapsulates the roles of chief of staff and key advisor to the executive director. She has been a strong advocate for racial and gender justice in the church and its related institutions.

ON AUG. 18, GLEN GUYTON WAS INSTALLED AS THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF MENNONITE CHURCH USA. HE IS THE FIRST AFRICANAMERICAN AND NON-ETHNIC MENNONITE TO HOLD THE POSITION. CAN YOU SHARE SOME OF YOUR FEELINGS SURROUNDING HIS APPOINTMENT?

I am both excited and cautious. Glen is an exceptional human being who loves God and the church. He believes the church can be better in living out the Gospel and he wants to work with others, including the next generation, to help shape the church’s future. At the same time, I am cautious because racism is alive and well. People often can’t seem to see how it operates in the church. My hope and prayer is that Glen will have enough support to see him through some of the racism he will encounter.

WHAT MOTIVATES YOU TO CONTINUE YOUR WORK WITH MENNONITE AND ANABAPTIST-ROOTED INSTITUTIONS IN SEARCH OF CHANGE AND TRANSFORMATION?

PHOTO BY VADA SNIDER

FROM THE FIELD

Q & A WITH IRIS DE LEÓNHARTSHORN MA ’05 4 | PEACEBUILDER | 2018-19

I was brought up Catholic and dabbled with the Presbyterians and Baptists, but found my home in the Anabaptist tradition.

No church tradition is perfect because it’s filled with human beings. My experiences as a Latina ingrained a deep concern for justice, both in itself and as a way toward right relationships with God, humanity and creation. It’s been an honor to work with many in the Mennonite church with that same conviction and vision of transformation. Relationships within the church and outside provide motivation to continue God’s reconciling work.

WHAT STRATEGIES HAVE YOU UTILIZED TO CONNECT AND INTEGRATE COMMUNITIES OF PEOPLE OF COLOR IN CHURCH INSTITUTIONS?

Sometimes the work of transformation takes trial and error.

Early on, the goal was educating about systemic racism and how it operated in our church institutions – a difficult lesson for many in the dominant culture who have the luxury to think in relational terms and be unaware of the systemic nature of racism and how it privileges white people. Real change has to happen at the systemic level, but there is an essential interpersonal piece rooted in being allies or agents of change in partnership with people of color (POC).

In recent years, Mennonite Church USA and related institutions have sponsored a yearly gathering called “Hope for the Future” – a wonderful, safe place for POC in leadership

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positions, including staff and board members, to forge relationships and determine what we need to work on within the church and what we need to publicly articulate. This space has been especially important in the current atmosphere that has given permission for people to openly act out their racism. We have tried to provide both respite and encouragement so that we POC can continue to be in the church.

YOU ONCE WROTE, “RECONCILIATION CAN’T HAPPEN WHEN PEOPLE LEAVE; IT HAPPENS WHEN WE CHOOSE TO STICK IT OUT TOGETHER.” THESE WORDS RESONATE BEYOND THE CHURCH CONTEXT INTO OTHER REALMS OF PEACEBUILDING. CAN YOU TALK ABOUT WHAT “STICKING IT OUT TOGETHER” MEANS?

Tom Yoder Neufeld [professor emeritus, Conrad Grebel University College] has talked about equating the Holy Spirit with the wind, which blows things together that don’t seem to go together. Tom says that as the church, we come together not because we necessarily belong together, but God has brought us together and now we need to figure out how we live together.

Finding ways to stick together can be painful but as followers of Christ, that is what we are called to do. That is the work

of God’s reconciling mission for the world. It’s hard to work things out if one party leaves the conversation. When we have theological or ideological differences in how we see the church or our organization, we need to find ways to talk with and trust each other. If we can do that, we can find a way forward.

SINCE GRADUATING FROM CJP, IS THERE ONE PARTICULAR LEARNING THAT HAS BEEN OF PRACTICAL USE?

I learned so much at CJP. Most useful was the exercise of putting my experiences within a theoretical framework and then the permission to consider other options. The quote I use often from Jayne Docherty, “I am not married to one theory, but I date around.”

Most impactful, though, was the encouragement and push to see myself as a capable academic. In high school, I was told Mexicans don’t go to college – a message that has plagued me most of my life. Halfway through the first meeting of a theory class, I walked out and cried in the hallway telling myself there was no way I could pass. [Academic Programs Director] Jayne Docherty came outside, listened, then pushed back and challenged me. I owe Jayne much gratitude in helping that message to stop playing in my head. She was a mentor and is still a friend.

AT THE UN

Monica Rijal MA ‘07, a member of CJP’s Board of Reference, is one of several alumni who work at or with the United Nations. She is a policy specialist in conflict prevention. (Photo by Steven Stauffer)

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FEATURES

DEVELOPING PEACE EDUCATION CURRICULUM IN IRAQ Iraqi scholars gather for CJP-led conflict analysis training

IN EARLY FEBRUARY 2018, 20 scholars from five leading Iraqi universities and a representative from Iraq’s Ministry of Education gathered in Beirut, Lebanon, for a five-day training on conflict analysis. The diverse group – which included both men and women representing Sunni, Shia and Assyrian Christian faiths – would lay the foundation for their eventual development of a peace education curriculum for Iraqi university students.

“They were passionate in jointly exploring systemic dynamics of conflicts in Iraq. This was a first for most, given the divides in recent decades,” said Catherine Barnes, a CJP professor who has taught and facilitated peacebuilding processes in more than 30 countries.

The training was part of a multi-phase, multi-year peacebuilding project with youth and academics in Iraq that has involved several CJP faculty and alumni. The $1.3-million initiative, funded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), was jointly implemented by CJP, Kufa University and two NGOs, the Iraqi Al-Amal Association and the Imam Al-Khoei Foundation.

SUPPORTING PROJECTS IN IRAQ The project’s second phase with youth concluded in April 2018, having provided five total trainings since beginning in fall 2017. Seventy-five youth, selected in a competitive application process, were supported in the creation and implementation of interfaith peace projects in communities across Iraq.

The academic trainings involved 46 scholars and educators,

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with the goal of creating a common peacebuilding curriculum to be taught in five Iraqi universities.

As key stakeholders in Iraqi social fabric, youth and academics are “seen as instrumental in strengthening social cohesion and promoting civil society initiatives and dialogue between various ethnic and religious groups,” according to the project grant.

“We estimate that the trainings and youth peace projects touched hundreds of lives and will have exponential benefits to the region in the future,” said Daryl Byler, CJP’s executive director. “Both the young people and the academics are empowered to continue their work, and to adapt their learnings in meaningful and sustainable ways.”

LAYING THE FOUNDATION FOR PEACE EDUCATION IN IRAQ The academic trainings support the promotion of a peace education framework for reconciliation.

Participants included professors of the humanities, political science and law from universities of Anbar, Baghdad, Karbala, Kufa and Tikrit.

“An initial goal of the project was to help equip educators to teach the subject of peacebuilding and conflict resolution in their university classrooms and to support them to serve as resources for the development of peace education in Iraq,” said Alma Abdul-Hadi Jadallah, a consultant and professor who regularly teaches at CJP’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute.

Participants showed determination to initiate change and valued an approach that was respectful of cultural traditions

FEATURES

The five-day training in Beirut, Lebanon, included 20 scholars from five leading Iraqi universities and a representative from Iraq’s Ministry of Education. During one activity, participants collaboratively constructed a 100-year timeline of Iraq, leading to an illuminating dialogue on underlying issues, patterns and turning points in their shared history.

PHOTO COURTESY OF IRAQI AL-AMAL ASSOCIATION

…THE TRAININGS AND YOUTH PEACE PROJECTS TOUCHED HUNDREDS OF LIVES AND WILL HAVE EXPONENTIAL BENEFITS TO THE REGION IN THE FUTURE. and knowledge, she added.

Jadallah, who is also president and managing director of the Fairfax, Virginia-based firm Kommon Denominator, has been involved in all phases of the project since it began in October 2016. She has conducted six youth workshops and four workshops for academics.

CONFLICT: ‘AN INTRINSIC HUMAN PHENOMENON’ Barnes’ agenda for the recent workshop included theories and models of conflict analysis, conflict perceptions and relationship lenses, conflicts as systems, and political economy.

Participants collaboratively constructed a 100-year timeline of Iraq, leading to an illuminating dialogue on underlying issues, patterns and turning points in their shared history.

They also jointly analyzed current conflict “drivers” and the political economy system in Iraq. A final day highlighted the psychosocial dimensions of conflict, including discussions of dignity, trauma and the cycle of violence.

“One important conceptual foundation that we discussed was that conflict is an intrinsic human phenomena that crosses scale barriers, and needs a holistic and interdisciplinary approach to understand and work with it,” Barnes said. “That’s why it was really beneficial to have humanities professors in the room with political science professors, and to use interactive exercises and dialogical discussions, instead of a lecture model, to build participants’ analytic skills regarding an understanding of conflict.”

Aala Ali MA ‘14, UNDP development officer, was one of the “visionaries” of this project, according to Byler. Contributors included Myriam Aziz MA ‘17, of Lebanon; Cynthia Nassif MA ‘14, of Lebanon; and Najla El Mangoush MA ‘15 of Libya (Nassif and El Mangoush are doctoral students at George Mason University); Ahmed Tarik MA ‘16, of Iraq; and Professor Carl Stauffer MA ‘02. Professor Jayne Docherty was also involved in early curriculum development.

—LAUREN JEFFERSON

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PHOTO BY JON ST YER

FROM THE FIELD

SERVING THE ARAB-AMERICAN COMMUNITY In spring’s weak sunlight, Danny Salim MA ‘11 enjoyed some fresh air on the busy Brooklyn street outside the ArabAmerican Family Support Center (AAFSC). In the windows above him hung large photo portraits of the city residents his organization serves. Service is a key theme in Salim’s life.

Before becoming a Fulbright Scholar at CJP, the Syrian native spent one year with the Vincentian Volunteers in Denver, Colorado, and a second year in Manchester, England, working in a variety of social services positions.

His first introduction to New York City was during a CJP practicum with the United Nations Development Programme.

After graduation, Salim returned to the city to work for Nonviolent Peaceforce, an organization that advocates for the protection of civilians in violent conflicts through unarmed

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strategies.

Eventually, though, he wanted to delve into the root causes of violence at a community level – at a family level.

“To understand conflict, we really need to understand family dynamics because it’s all interconnected,” he said.

AAFSC, present in each of the five boroughs of New York City, offers many social, educational and legal services to new immigrants and citizens. In his role as director of the anti-violence program, Salim supervises a dedicated team of multilingual staff that works with victims of intimate partner violence, sex trafficking and sexual assault. He spends part of his time among the New York City Family Justice centers, which are operated by the Mayor’s Office to Combat Domestic Violence.

“Our partnership with the mayor’s office is to offer culturally competent, trauma-informed services to victims of all backgrounds, because we understand the challenges of the community and have the resources to be cultural brokers between the community and mainstream service providers,” Salim says.

Founded in 1994, AAFSC is the first Arabic-speaking social services organization in New York. With 13 languages spoken among nearly 60 staff, it serves the Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim and South Asian communities, collectively described with the acronym AMEMSA. Though culturally and linguistically diverse, these communities have been subjected to similar oppressions and prejudice in the United States.

Salim started in the organization working on child protection issues, a space in which his conflict transformation training was helpful. One experience that “sticks in my head,” he said, was when he facilitated a parenting workshop with three men and three women using the circle process as its structure.

“This had not been done before, and after the first two sessions, I thought ‘What am I doing? Is this the right decision?’

It took two or three sessions before the participants began to open up, but everyone attended every session. And in the end, one person said, ‘I wish this was filmed or recorded because it could be a lesson to others.’ In the end, they wanted more,” he said. “They valued the experience to hear different perspectives and challenges the other person was going through and why that led them to where they were.”

That position also allowed him to follow the families of the participants, and see, first-hand, how their dynamics improved.

He repeatedly characterized his current work as “rewarding but challenging,” with its transformative impact less visible.

Salim educates victims about their rights and options, empowering them to make their own choices, and offering support.

He deals with complex dynamics of gender, culture, language, power, relationship. Abuse, he said, comes from power differentials, “when one person has power over another.” Conflict is a power struggle. Thus transformation and resolution is more challenging in an abusive situation, “because intimate partner violence is abuse, not conflict, and the abuser has to first acknowledge the wrong, which is challenging.”

Yet, he said, “my background in conflict transformation is still with me. It doesn’t go away. Change happens over time but change can happen. It takes transformation and time. Justice can be challenging, because it takes time and effort. And justice can happen, too.” —LAUREN JEFFERSON

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Annette Lantz-Simmons (right) and Academic Programs Director Jayne Docherty PHOTO BY ANDREW STRACK

PEACEBUILDER OF THE YEAR: ANNETTE LANTZSIMMONS MA ‘09 Bringing a new sense of justice to multiple city venues – neighborhoods, courts and prisons, schools and more – is a challenge that requires focus, patience and an empowering spirit.

“One bite at a time. That’s all you can do,” said 2018 Peacebuilder of the Year Annette Lantz-Simmons at the June 13 luncheon ceremony in her honor during the Summer Peacebuilding Institute.

The executive director of the Center for Conflict Resolution (CCR) in Kansas City, Missouri, is the fourth recipient of the annual recognition of a CJP graduate. She first attended SPI in 2005 and earned a master’s degree in conflict transformation in 2009.

Lantz-Simmons “has led CCR’s commitment to a workplace environment that is reflective of its mission in the community and expanded the traditional work of a mediation center by promoting a holistic mission that focuses on prevention, education and restoration,” said CJP Executive Director Daryl Byler in an announcement of the honoree in spring 2018.

In her acceptance speech, Lantz-Simmons highlighted CCR’s programs. The organization offers neighborhoods and families group facilitation, conflict resolution and mediation training, and trauma and circle workshops; has assisted the city in implementing – and an-

ticipates expanding – restorative justice practices in schools; offered restorative processes and trauma and conflict resolution trainings in prisons, reentry facilities, and courts; and provided various organizations with group facilitation, trainings, trauma awareness and mediation.

Trainings and programs such as these are “planting seeds,” Lantz-Simmons said in an earlier interview. “People often do what they know, even if it doesn’t work or is very uncomfortable for them.

We offer a different mindset and practical skills to do conflict in a new way.”

“CCR is an example of what it takes to do real peacebuilding and effect significant change, beyond the boundaries of mediation,” said CJP academic programs director Jayne Docherty, in her presentation of the award to Lantz-Simmons. “It takes long-term vision and teamwork to actually make significant transformation in systems, and not just resolve conflicts. The vision that you have held is a big vision for a less violent and more just city, and that is what we love to see.”

In a video made by CCR staff for the occasion, founder Diane Kyser MA ‘06 praised Lantz-Simmons as having “brought this agency to incredible places because of the vision that she has had and then dedicated [herself] to pursue.”

CCR has strong ties to CJP, as CCR founder Kyser and staffers Gregory Winship MA ’17 and Debbie Bayless ‘18 have completed graduate degrees. Additionally, former CCR education strategist (and Annette’s daughter) Mikhala Lantz-Simmons is a 2015 graduate.

—CHRISTOPHER CLYMER KURTZ

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FEATURES

CJP ALUMNI STORYTELLING CONTEST WINNERS Spreading the Word of Peace

LITERATURE: 1. Elena Huegel MA ‘07, “Acompañamiento: The Privilege of Walking Alongside.”

2. Florina Xavier MA ’04 and Ashok Xavier MA ’04, “Stones to Silver.”

3. Michael McAndrew MA ’17, “Nostos [Homecoming]”

The contest was open to all master’s and graduate certificate alumni. Entrants were judged in three categories: literature, visual arts and performative arts.

The winners earned a $2,000 prize, second-place $1,000, and third place, $300. A panel of three judges with a diversity of experience in the arts and peacebuilding selected the winners.

VISUAL ARTS, INCLUDING FINE ARTS AND CONTEMPORARY ARTS: 1. Ali Gohar MA ’02, “The Sun Also Rises” 2. Elena Huegel MA ’07, “Dignity” 3. Michelle Jacket MA ‘13, “Beyond Essays: Approaching Peace Education Differently”

PERFORMATIVE ARTS: 1. Carol Grosman MA ‘09, “Jerusalem Stories” 2. Katrina Gehman MA ‘15, “Standing as a Woman: Breaking Internalized Objectification / Overcoming Patriarchy”

FROM “DIGNIT Y” BY ELENA HUEGEL

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FEATURES

CJP GRADUATES 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 our “Alumni of The Center for Justice & Peacebuilding, EMU” LinkedIn closed group.

•

List “Eastern Mennonite University Center for Justice and Peacebuilding” in the Education Section in your profile.

Visit the alumni section of the CJP homepage emu.edu/cjp/alumni to discover our network.

Contact Peacebuilding Network Coordinator Diana Tovar-Rojas to share your journey, update your profile and/or join us via Zoom in a classroom!

DIANA TOVAR-ROJAS • diana.tovarrojas@emu.edu • +1-450- 830-9364

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MEET THE STUDENTS JESSICA JAMES CALEB HOCHSTETLER

JOANNA FRIESEN ERIN CAMPBELL PABLO AKINDOA earned a degree in administration, politics, social sciences and international relations in 2002 from the University of Kinshasa. He rose from administrative assistant in the National Assembly of the Democratic Republic of Congo to advisor of the diplomatic section, assisting in bilateral and multilateral peace negotiations. He co-founded FADEP, an NGO working on disarmament of light weapons, before immigrating to the United States.

TALA BAUTISTA of the Kalinga First Nation, has worked for the last 10 years with indigenous communities across the Philippines. Tala serves as the community development director of PeaceBuilders Community, and senior vice president of Coffee for Peace, a business passionate about inclusive development, justice and peace that produces global standard quality coffee.

has spent the past four years as a program coordinator and instructor in outdoor education at Living Earth School in Virginia. In 2013, she completed a two-year immersive training in survival skills and nature mentoring from the Wilderness Awareness School in Washington state. Before this, she earned a degree in English literature from the University of Virginia and spent several years as a carpenter with non-profits, schools and farms.

JIM HERMAN

JOY KREIDER

a career diplomat, was recently Consul General at the U.S. Consulate General in Frankfurt, Germany, where he was responsible for leading and managing the largest U.S. consulate in the world. He also served in Guatemala, Japan, Italy, China, El Salvador, Washington D.C. and India. He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Hawaii and an MA in strategic studies at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

has served with InnerCHANGE: An Order of Christians Among the Poor in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. She has a PhD in neuroscience, trained in STAR I and II, and has worked with individuals with developmental, behavioral and psychiatric difficulties. She has a passion for bringing conflict resolution and trauma resilience together, as there is a great need for both in Cambodia.

EDWARD HAGAN

MUHAMMAD AKRAM of Pakistan, has 10 years experience in grant writing, research and monitoring of peace and conflict projects funded by USAID, UK-Aid, Norwegian Church Aid, British Council, the Templeton Foundation, The Asia Foundation, and Adidas.

He recently participated in a year-long Global Leaders Initiative-Atlas Corps Fellowship.

Muhammed is also co-founder of the Dialogue, a nonprofit in Pakistan to bridge the divides among communities in conflict.

is earning a Master of Divinity degree at Eastern Mennonite Seminary, as well as a degree through CJP. She graduated from Houghton College in 2017 with a double-major in theology and biblical studies. She and her husband Tim, a mechanic, enjoy working on bicycles together. At EMU, Joanna has been an assistant coach for the track and cross-country teams.

has degrees in biology and bioinformatics and an MBA with a focus on nonprofit leadership. He worked in the technology sector before most recently serving as a co-leader for a service unit in Mississippi.

He plans to pursue a degree in conflict transformation with the hopes of eventually landing at an intersection point between his passions, values and interests.

lives in Connecticut with her husband and four children. She earned an MDiv degree from Andover Newton Theological School, and is a ministerial intern preparing for fellowship and ordination with the Unitarian Universalist Church.

She has also worked in environmental restoration, mentorship, counseling and victim advocacy.

She earned her undergraduate degree in sociology and women’s studies at New Mexico State University.

KIRBY BROADNAX recently completed a three-year fellowship at Western Reserve Land Conservancy, helping community members repurpose vacant neighborhood land.

She has also worked with Teach for America in Connecticut and in mediation in Cleveland, Ohio.

Her degree is in sociology and women’s studies from Miami (Ohio) University.

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JESSICA FRANCAR of Kurdish ethnic roots, was raised in Wisconsin. She is a therapist with children and families in crisis in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She has lived in Jordan and the Kurdish region of Iraq, and worked with refugees and internally displaced peoples, focusing on education and gender-based violence.

is a Hagerstown, Maryland, attorney who has overseen a small practice in credit related law for the past decade.

Originally trained in credit and investment analysis, Ed earned a law degree from Catholic University in 2001, and worked in mediation with the District Court of Maryland before beginning private practice in 2004. He now mediates broadly in a community-based system matters such as misdemeanor diversion, family issues, and prisoner re-entry.

HANNAH KUNDE DAVID HEILIGER a youth minister and ministry director for Bridgeway Community Church in Maryland, has spent 16 years specializing in mentoring emerging leaders through conflict resolution, community service and ministry.

As a consultant with the BridgeLeader Network, he facilitates and mediates conversations about race and cultural conflict around the United States.

grew up in Seattle, Washington, sharing a home with international students and refugee families. She studied international relations, sociology and Spanish at George Fox University. She spent a year in Mexico City working with a Quaker church and a year with Quaker Voluntary Service in Portland, Oregon at L’Arche, a global non-profit of intentional communities among people with and without disabilities.

FOCUS

OSCAR SIWALI is the founder and director of the nonprofit SADRA (Southern African Development and Reconstruction Agency).

An ordained minister, he previously worked at the Centre for Conflict Resolution, the Quaker Peace Centre, and for Sakh’Ulutsha Scripture Union’s HIV/AIDS Cape Town in various fields of conflict resolution, human rights and HIV and AIDS.

JAMIE LEEK from Morgantown, West Virginia, is earning an MA in Interdisciplinary Studies focusing on conflict transformation and organizational leadership. A U.S. Army veteran who served from 2002-10, she earned a BA from West Virginia University focusing on disability studies, human services and sociology in 2018. Jamie eventually wants to earn a graduate degree in counseling and work with veterans. She volunteers at Stepping Stones, which pairs disabled individuals with unique recreational opportunities.

YASMIENE MABROUK a multi-disciplinary artist, is from Minneapolis by way of Santa Cruz, New Orleans and other places. With an undergraduate degree in gender and sexuality studies from Tulane University, Yasmiene has focused community organizing on consent and ending sexual violence, as well as studying non-violent communication and serving as a volunteer mediator.

ERIC PAUL is coordinator for justice and compassion for the Church of the Nazarene in Hawaii, and also executive director of the West Hawaii Mediation Center.

Eric previously managed a food relief and justice nonprofit in Nashville, Tennessee, and was a peacemaker in Israel/Palestine with Christian Peacemaker Teams. He has a degree from Vanderbilt Divinity School.

EMILY THORNTON is the assistant director of community partnerships at Birmingham-Southern College.

Her work includes connecting students to community organizations through volunteer opportunities and internships as well as coordinating service-learning travel projects.

Emily received her bachelor’s degree in religion from the University of the South: Sewanee in 2010.

ROBIN MCLAMB

CHRIS LENSHYN has been a pastor with the Mennonite Church Canada conference for over 10 years. He earned a bachelor’s degree in church ministries from Canadian Mennonite University. He lives with his family in British Columbia, where he is also an author, restorative justice practitioner, affordable housing advocate in both grassroots and civic circles, and interfaith and intercultural bridge builder.

Chris will be pursuing a degree in restorative justice through the limited-residency model.

develops English language learning materials for Japanese students. After graduating with a degree in political science from Wake Forest University, she moved to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to work alongside a church and help women start small businesses.

When she returned to the U.S., she ran academic and support programs for teen parents through Communities in Schools.

OLIVIA PAUL is a native of Haiti who witnessed the impact of domestic violence on her family and community. She has a degree in psychology from the State University of Haiti and graduate coursework in applied social psychology at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica.

She has worked with GHESKIO Centers and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, known as UN Women.

SUSANNA TOLBERT is a dual degree student, also working towards a Master of Divinity at Eastern Mennonite Seminary and ordination within the United Methodist Church. She is a music director for a congregation in Dinwiddie, Virginia. Susanna wishes to work as a church consultant, teaching conflict management and communication skills.

JENNY MARTINEZ is a southern California native who has spent the last five years working in cross-cultural health education and leading undergraduate study abroad programs in Mexico and the Middle East. She has undergraduate degrees in communication studies and kinesiology.

sought asylum in the United States from the Democratic Republic of Congo after the murder of his father and his own kidnapping when he followed in his father’s footsteps to resist and reform the government. He has since lost his mother, and the Congolese regime continues to harass and intimidate family members. He has lived in Harrisonburg since May 2017.

He co-created and serves as president of the Vijana Africa youth organization. He has a degree in information and communication technology.

MAHA MEHANNA works for Applied Information Management as the Gaza office coordinator and senior translator. She has experience in banking, community development and fundraising.

She is a member of Other Voice, Friendship Across Borders, and the General Assembly of Dalia Association, a Palestinian community foundation. A dedicated human rights activist, Maha has been an invited speaker and participant at seminars, workshops and conferences around the world.

DANIEL RHODES directs the undergraduate social work program at University of North Carolina-Greensboro.

Daniel holds a PhD in cultural studies, a graduate certificate in women and gender studies, and a Master’s of Social Work degree. He has been a licensed clinical social worker in North Carolina since 1999, working in community mental health, in therapeutic foster care, and with immigrants and refugees.

WANG YING founded Peace in China, an educational and cultural exchange center, after participating in the Mennonite Central Committee International Visitors Exchange Program.

She coordinates the center’s Northeast Asia Youth Peace Camp and helped to establish the Northeast Asia Regional Peacebuilding Institute. Also an English teacher, she holds a degree from Shanghai Financial and Economics University.

DAVID NYIRINGABO is deputy coordinator of the Great Lakes Christian Peacebuilders Network and assistant coordinator of the Congo Peace Network (CPN), a youth peace organization he joined after losing his father and family properties during the second Congo war.

In 2015, he received a CPN scholarship to earn a bachelor’s degree in peacebuilding and development at the Protestant University of Rwanda. In 2016, he was nominated for the Inspired Individuals Program of Tearfund UK.

JULIAN WARD

JUNA ROSALES MULLER

SIDNEY MORGAN is the district restorative justice coordinator for Portland (Oregon) Public Schools. While working for 10 years with the Multnomah County Juvenile Justice Department, she became a certified conflict mediator and developed the Hands of Wonder Garden Program, giving youth basic job skills around the growing and selling of organic produce. An adjunct professor at Lewis and Clark College, she has also taught at Concordia University and Washington State University.

RODRIGUE MAKELELE

currently directs land restoration programs at a California non-profit. Juna grew up in nearby Ojai, where she facilitates council and youth rites of passage with the Ojai Foundation. For the past eight years, she has led Mending Patriotism, offering an arts-based dialogue space around migration, inclusion, and nationalism through quilting with clothing left behind on migrants’ trails. Juna studied the political ecology of the U.S. Southwest at Colorado College.

from Manitoba, Canada, most recently worked in fundraising at Yale University. While in New Haven, Connecticut, he discovered the transformative potential of restorative justice and began volunteering at a program that diverts youth in the criminal justice system.

He has a degree in journalism from Concordia University in Montreal.

RACHEL WEAVER is an elementary English Language Learners teacher at Harrisonburg City Schools with volunteer experience in refugee resettlement. She graduated from James Madison University with a BA in modern foreign languages, with a concentration in Spanish, in 2014.

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FOCUS YEAR IN REVIEW

CJP HIGHLIGHTS 2017-18

2017 STAR Director Katie Mansfield facilitates two 2-day workshops for Catholic Relief Services partners at the annual Institute for Peacebuilding in Africa.

2018

Amina Abdulakadir GC ‘15 wins the Women Peacebuilders for Water Award from the Milan (Italy) Center for Food Law and Policy. Fellow Women’s Peacebuilding Leadership Program graduate Naema “Nimo” Somo GC ‘15 is a finalist.

A large group of 25 CJP students and EMU counseling students attend STAR I, co-facilitated by STAR Director Katie Mansfield and Matthew Bucher, MA ‘15, MDiv ‘15.

2017 Concluding a grant-funded nationwide listening process, the Zehr Institute of Restorative Justice releases a report with recommendations for sustainable funding of RJ-related projects and programming.

A joint CJP-Daughters for Life Foundation gala event in Washington D.C. honors Leymah Gbowee MA’ 07, Nobel Peace Prize laureate; Ronit Avni, a Peabody Award-winning media producer; and Suhad Babaa, the executive director at Just Vision.The fundraiser helps to bring a female peacebuilder from the Middle East to study at CJP. A class of 23 new graduate students, including five Fulbright Scholars, begin their first semester of studies.

EMU, founded in 1917, kicks off its year-long Centennial celebration.

A STAR consultation, co-facilitated by Dr. Ram Bhagat, Dr. David Anderson Hooker and Katie Mansfield, is held with Presbyterian Church USA representatives in conjunction with Freedom Rising, an initiative to address systemic racism’s effects on African American men.

SEPTEMBER

NOVEMBER OCTOBER

CJP students lobby in the Virginia state capitol of Richmond for expansion of Medicaid and increasing the felony threshold.

Twenty-one RJ practitioners from South Korea visit EMU during an 11-day East Coast tour organized with the Korea Peacebuilding Institute, led by Jae Young Lee MA ‘03.

A U.S. government shutdown, averted through the use of a talking stick in a dialogue process, prompts CJP Executive Director Daryl Byler to invite several national and state politicians to attend SPI to learn more about circle processes.

JANUARY FEBRUARY

DECEMBER

The Zehr Institute hosts a fall webinar series on transforming historical harms of slavery and racial injustice, funded by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.

Twenty-five restorative justice practitioners from Brazil visit EMU for five days, hosted by The Zehr Institute.

CJP students facilitate a training in circle processes for the regional community with the Shenandoah Valley Facilitators Network.

CJP students work with undergraduate EMU students and the Harrisonburg community in organizing protests around the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy program.

2017

The third annual Community Day, themed “Practical Tools for Hard Problems in Our Communities,” attracts 85 local and regional peacebuilders.

Eight graduates of the Women’s Peacebuilding Leadership Program are celebrated in a ceremony in December in Nairobi, Kenya.

STAR hosts a one-day training for Harrisonburg High School Peer Leaders and leads a two-day workshp for the USAID staff care team.

2017

EMU is one of four U.S. universities selected by The Mosaic Theater Company of D.C. as a venue for performances that share different perspectives on the Israel/Palestine conflict.

Financed by donors James and Marian Payne, the event was also a fundraiser for the Daughters for Life Foundation scholarship for female peacebuilders from the Middle East to attend CJP. Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish’s memoir I Shall Not Hate, and “Via Dolorosa,” by Sir David Hare, were presented.

2018

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FOCUS 2018

2018

Leymah Gbowee MA ‘07 is awarded the university’s first honorary Doctor of Justice degree and offers the commencement address.

2018 MCC partners from Lebanon, Syria and Palestine participate in STAR I in Lebanon with co-facilitators Katie Mansfield, Krista Johnson Weicksel MA ‘10 and Ayman Kerols MA ‘16.

CJP students lobby in Washington D.C. for a permanent path to citizenship for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients.

EMU announces that Gilberto Perez GC ‘99, dean of students at Goshen College in Indiana, will be honored with the university’s Distinguished Service Award. He has been a therapist, social worker, peace evangelist, community advocate and social work professor.

At EMU’s 100th Commencement ceremonies, 29 CJP graduates representing 13 countries receive their degrees.

The M.J. Sharp Peace & Justice Endowed Scholarship, established after the death of UN expert Michael J. Sharp ‘05 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, presents funds to its first recipient, Congolese peacebuilder David Nyiringabo Mazimpaka. He begins his studies in fall 2018.

Several CJP faculty and alumni participate in the Caux Forum in Switzerland. Professor Carl Stauffer MA ‘02, academic director for the Caux Scholars program, provides a keynote address.

The 24rd Annual Summer Peacebuilding Institute begins.

Nineteen courses are offered to more than 180 people from 35 countries.

MARCH

MAY APRIL

JULY JUNE

AUGUST

Annette Lantz-Simmons MA ‘09, executive director of Kansas City’s Center for Conflict Resolution, is presented with the CJP Peacebuilder of the Year Award.

LovEMU Day, a university-wide fundraiser, helps CJP to raise $6,537 from 54 gifts.

EMU joins a world-wide bell-tolling ceremony to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. on the 50th anniversary of his assassination in Memphis, Tennessee.

Palestinian peacebuilder Maha Mehanna, awardee of the Daughters for Life Foundation scholarship, arrives to begin her studies.

Creative Initiatives grants focused on arts and peacebuilding and community engagement are awarded to CJP students Katrina Poplett for on-campus restorative justice trainings and to Eunkyung Ahn, Felix Kioko, Kajungu Mturi and Renata Loberg for their playback theater activities with local immigrant and refugee teenagers.

CJP welcomes 21 new students for orientation.

Others started the program during SPI.

2018 Fania Davis, co-founder and director of Restorative Justice for Oakland (California) Youth, spends a week on campus as a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow with the Council of Independent Colleges.

2018

Seven graduate students are selected to present at Notre Dame’s Student Peace Conference.

2018

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PROGRAMS

Graduates of WPLP hold their graduate certificates in peacebuilding leadership after a ceremony in Nairobi, Kenya, in December: (from left) Maryam Abdikadir, Judith Mandillah, Shamsa Sheikh, Beatrice Nzovu, Rachel Mutai, Violet Muthiga, Sarah Naibei (absent: Catherine Njeru). This was the fourth cohort to graduate from the program.

(Courtesy photos)

THEY ARE INSPIRING. WOMEN’S PEACEBUILDING LEADERSHIP PROGRAM

• Georgia Molia-Hanna is the first woman to hold a government peacebuilding position in Papua New Guinea.

INNOVATING INTO THE FUTURE

• Amina Abdulkadir was awarded the 2017 Woman Peacebuilders for Water Award, honoring women working to resolve water-related conflicts. Classmate Naema “Nimo” Somo was a finalist among eight others in the inaugural international award offered by Milan Global and the Milan (Italy) Center for Food Law and Policy.

Challenges to WPLP funding lead to new ideas

• Violet Muthiga developed an impactful project focused on the re-integration of a group of mothers who had been ostracized from their community after their sons were arrested on terrorism charges at a local mosque.

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• Fatuma Abass ran for public office in Kenya. So did Maryam Abdikadir.

PROGRAMS

The work of these graduates and others from the Women’s Peacebuilding Leadership Program is the inspiration for new innovation at CJP. “Recent decreases in traditional funding opportunities that supported WPLP in the past have led us to focus on new innovations that build on the program’s strengths and empower its alumni,”said Daryl Byler, CJP executive director. “It’s important for the CJP community to know that while we have not identified funders to continue WPLP in its current configuration, the success of program graduates and the contributions of those who supported them here at CJP is the basis for future cohort-based peacebuilding training in a different format.”

WHAT COULD THIS NEW PHASE OF COHORT-BASED EDUCATION LOOK LIKE? • WPLP graduates and their organizations create a wide network and strong foundation to develop and implement effective peacebuilding projects.

In contrast to top-down project design and implementation, WPLP graduates, with their local knowledge and capacity to connect and empower, bolster the work and regional infrastructure that matters to specific communities and regions. CJP has relied successfully on graduates and their grassroots connections to identify areas of need and integrate their leadership and organizations into project implementation.

In Kenya, for example, WPLP graduates have advised on specific needs and topics related to a training and mini-grant program for youth-focused organizations, and their organizations have been integrated into the project’s future implementation.

• The program’s successful cohort model, in which participants learn and grow together through their coursework, has shown that building community among peacebuilders is just as important as each individual’s ongoing work.

A strong community of peacebuilders grows resilience, provides access to mentorship and resources, and inspires others. Participants in our cohort learning model often report that they feel more equipped, secure and empowered in the long-term because they can rely on other participants for advice, support and mentorship. Cohorts provide a problem-solving hub, allowing for frank discussion and lots of exchanging of ideas through the learning and implementation process. This collaborative, integrative model of community-building helps lay the groundwork for systemic change.

In Iraq, this model has been used successfully in youth peacebuilding leadership trainings and community projects, as well as with educators and administrators engaging with the potential for a national peacebuilding

curriculum (see page 6).

Extending the cohort model to professional development and trainings, CJP staff can develop innovative combinations of curriculum on a range of topics to meet organizational needs.

• WPLP’s model can have impact in the United States – and WPLP graduates can help us create and implement new intervention models for diverse contexts.

Violet Muthiga’s work with ostracized mothers, for example, has direct application to diverse integration or re-integration projects in the United States. Her model – combining community education, counseling, mentoring, and trauma and resilience training – has the potential for application in other contexts: refugees and immigrants struggling to adapt to new cultures; residents in communities dealing with long-term conflict and/or misunderstandings; or mothers who want to use their experiences with family members to counter the effects of violent extremism, racism, or domestic violence through building resiliency in their families and communities.

With growing interest and coalition-building around important issues in the United States, there are many benefits to domestic deployment of the model that has empowered so many WPLP peacebuilders in other countries.

With adaptable curriculum and a variety of online and face-to-face delivery options, a cohort focused on a specific topic could undergo training, followed by project-based practical application and leadership opportunities.

This could take shape in a variety of ways: A group from Appalachia could explore the effects of adverse childhood experiences through the lens of trauma and resilience and then collaborate on a specific project using their new knowledge and skills. Pastors could focus on conflict resolution and prevention. People working with youth could learn the basics of restorative justice to integrate into their organizational structure.

—LAUREN JEFFERSON

WHAT’S YOUR VISION? Do you have an idea for a cohort-based project? (See pages 6 and 22 for examples of this model.)

Share your idea with Alena Yoder, CJP cohort projects coordinator: alena.yoder@emu.edu.

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PROGRAMS

SUMMER PEACEBUILDING INSTITUTE

A SOURCE OF HOPE Donors see SPI scholarships as a source of hope

FOR MANY PEACEBUILDERS attending the Summer Peacebuilding Institute at Eastern Mennonite University, scholarships provide the necessary funds to travel and take courses. Since 2006, the Valley Friends meeting, a group of 25 to 30 families, has made an SPI scholarship the largest allotment in their annual budget.

“We’re a small meeting so we’ve decided that financial support of peacebuilders is a way to live out our values,” said member Lois Carter Crawford.

Over the years, that support has contributed to training for Quakers working with the African Great Lakes Initiative, an initiative of the Friends Peace Team. This year, with no international SPI participants signaling Quaker affiliation on their SPI application, the committee shifted their focus.

“Because there’s been so much violence in the US, we looked for someone locally who was working on reduction of gun violence and peacemaking,” Crawford said.

That recipient was Zanetta Ford-Byrd, executive director of the Harrisonburg Education Foundation and a sociology professor at James Madison University. By paying tuition of a local recipient, the fund also had money remaining to award a partial scholarship to Mohammed Ishaq Israr of Pakistan. He works with Penny Appeal, an organization that provides foster care for orphaned children and homes for widows and homeless men.

Israr has attended SPI four times, once as a Winston Fellow and last year with the support of Valley Friends. Each time he has stayed with the Crawfords in their home.

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During SPI 2018, more than 180 people from 35 countries took at least one of the 19 training courses offered.

OTHER SCHOLARSHIP AWARDEES: • Esther Paya, of Nigeria, is the 2018 Winston Fellow. She took the Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) II training, as well as courses in “Formation for Peace Practice” and “Truth-telling, Racial Healing and Restorative Justice.”

• Paul Ruot Bayoch, a master trainer with AECOM International in South Sudan, was awarded the Alper Family Scholarship, which supports one African or Asian peacebuilder with tuition and lodging for two SPI sessions. Bayoch facilitates the trauma awareness program, which uses STAR curriculum. He took courses in restorative justice, conflict analysis, and truth-telling and reconciliation.

• Maji Ndasule PeterX, a trainer and coordinator with Carefronting’s Alternatives to Violence Project in Nigeria, and Alexia Stouraiti, a lawyer, mediator, restorative circles keeper and psychodramatist from Athens, Greece, received the Stoltzfus Scholarships for international participants working to bridge global barriers of language and culture.

• Coming to the Table offers scholarships to its members, who work on “acknowledging and healing wounds from racism that is rooted in the United States’ history of slavery,” according to their website. This year’s recipients include Cheryl Goode, Sarah Kohrs, Sharon Morgan, Crixell Shell and James Tyler Jr. They each took one course, ranging from circle processes and truth-telling to restorative justice and STAR training.

—LAUREN JEFFERSON

Top row, from left: Zanetta Ford Byrd, Paul Ruot Bayoch, Alexandra Stouraiti, Cheryl Goode. Bottom row, from left: Esther Paya, Maji Ndasule PeterX, James Tyler Jr., Sarah Kohrs. (Photos by Macson McGuigan and Andrew Strack)

PROGRAMS Civil rights attorney Ari Wilkenfeld speaks at the May 31 Horizons of Change luncheon. Among others, he represents two female clients bringing legal action against high-profile men in media.

PHOTOS BY ANDREW STRACK

Daryl Davis presents “Race Relations and Constructive Dialogue with the KKK” at the June 6 Horizons of Change luncheon.

‘EYE-OPENING’ CONVERSATIONS A CIVIL RIGHTS ATTORNEY AND A RACE RELATIONS EXPERT SHARE NEW PERSPECTIVES RACE RELATIONS EXPERT Daryl Davis and attorney Ari Wilkenfeld brought diverse perspectives on civil rights to Horizons of Change luncheons during SPI 2018.

Davis has spent decades in dialogue with members of white supremacist groups, including the Klu Klux Klan, and convinced many to rethink these affiliations. He is the author of Klan-destine Relationships: A Black Man’s Odyssey in the Ku Klux Klan (New Horizon Press, 1998) due for reprint in the next year. He has also been the subject of a 2016 documentary Accidental Courtesy and has been featured by The Washington Post, The Atlantic, NPR and CNN. Wilkenfeld has spent his professional life in the combative, confrontational world of litigation. In a corner of his Washington, D.C. office at the law firm of Wilkenfeld, Herendeen & Atkinson, he keeps a collection of baseball bats, one for each case he has won in court. At SPI, Wilkenfeld visited Professor Carolyn Stauffer’s “Sexual Harms: Changing the Narrative” class and later spoke at a luncheon.

Those interactions exposed “the world that I live in,” which stigmatizes the possibilities, process and potential of collaborative conflict resolution, he said in a phone interview a few days later. “I’ve studied truth and reconciliation as it was

conducted in South Africa, and taught negotiation and diplomacy in college and law school, but never had the opportunity to have my manner of doing my job challenged by a group of people who have different ideas about conflict resolution, and not just different ideas but carefully studied and well-thoughtout ideas.”

Many SPI participants – and not just those attending this year’s first-time course offering on sexual harms – bring a nuanced understanding of gender-related violence, said Bill Goldberg MA ‘01, SPI director.

“Increased gender-based violence and inequalities are common symptoms of fragile states, which is why global attention is much more attuned to this issue,” Goldberg said. “The United States delayed development of its required action plan related to UNCR 1325 for 11 years, which says something about how little our political leadership cares about this issue.

The grass-roots efforts of the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements reflect on issues of global importance.”

During his talk, his word choice was respectfully challenged by listeners. Later, Wilkenfeld said that he’s been mulling over the different perspectives he heard.

“It would be better if, instead of beating each other up in court, we could all sit down and talk things out, figure out how much harm is done and do so in a way that is designed to heal everybody, even the alleged perpetrator,” he said. “People in my profession should all be thinking about that possibility.

But our culture doesn’t value that kind of resourceful thinking about conflict resolution. Our culture values wins and losses.”

—LAUREN JEFFERSON

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PROGRAMS Kenneth Wilson (right), president of August Town Peace Builders, receives the Prime Minister’s Medal of Appreciation from Prime Minister Andrew Holness April 25, 2018, at Jamaica House.

PHOTO BY YHOMO HUTCHINSON/JAMAIC A INFORMATION SERVICE

SPI PARTICIPANT RECOGNIZED

BY JAMAICAN GOVERNMENT FOR COMMUNITY PEACEBUILDING WORK SOME TIME AWAY IN 2003 was exactly what Kenneth Wilson needed to figure out his next move. A longtime activist and organizer in the August Town community on the outskirts of Kingston, Jamaica, Wilson was feeling isolated in his efforts to address the gang violence that routinely brought “misery and mayhem” to his hometown.

“I was like John the Baptist, the lone voice speaking about peace,” Wilson recalls. “People were cowering. People were afraid of the violence.”

At the Summer Peacebuilding Institute that year, able to reflect from a distance on these challenges, he began drafting plans for a new organization composed of leaders in each of August Town’s five districts. Wilson, who had also attended SPI in 2000, 2001 and 2002, envisioned a group that could both identify emerging conflicts and then work together to resolve them.

While still at SPI, Wilson compiled a list of specific residents to recruit to the effort, and immediately upon returning, began working to make the August Town Peace Builders a reality.

Over the 15 years since, the group has been able to repeatedly defuse local conflicts before they spin out of control, working with a variety of partners including the police, churches and other organizations.

“We meet, we plan, we engage. Once we hear of an incident, we meet and we plan and we intervene,” Wilson says. “I know that [we] have saved many lives in August Town, each time a conflict threatens to explode and we are able to neutralize it.”

As a result, August Town Peace Builders’ stature and reputation within the community has grown, propelled by Wilson’s frequent interviews with local media. It still came as a shock, however, when he received a phone call earlier this year letting

20 | PEACEBUILDER | 2018-19

him know that he’d been chosen to receive the Jamaican Prime Minister’s Medal of Appreciation for Contribution to Nation Building. Wilson accepted the award from Prime Minister Andrew Holness at a ceremony on April 25.

“It was really a defining moment for me personally,” Wilson says.

There have, of course, been setbacks along the way, including a recent outbreak of violence in August Town despite the group’s best efforts. And there have been constant sacrifices required of Wilson and his colleagues, such as putting personal lives on hold to prioritize community needs. Buoyed by the recent honor, however, Wilson hopes his fellow peacebuilders around the world find the strength to continue their work.

“Persons who are a part of this field are a special kind of human being,” he says. “We care about humanity. We want to live in peace, in harmony. We must never give up, because if we give up, it will be worse. I just want to encourage my colleagues in this work.” —ANDREW JENNER

PROGRAMS

PHOTO BY MACSON MCGUIGAN

MYANMAR PEACE NEGOTIATOR WORKS AT GRASSROOTS, NATIONAL LEVELS Ja Nan Lahtaw MA ‘04 facilitates the highest levels of peace talks in Myanmar – but also engagement at the community and grassroots level. Sustainable peace, she said, requires both.

The technical advisor to the peace political dialogue process and consultant to the technical advisory team of the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), Lahtaw returned this summer to the Summer Peacebuilding Institute for a course in facilitation led by Professor Catherine Barnes.

In Myanmar, Lahtaw spends much of her time convening and facilitating negotiations between the government and ethnic armed organizations as well as between various ethnic armed groups. Since gaining independence from Britain at the end of World War II, Myanmar has suffered protracted civil war.

Lahtaw is also the executive director of the Nyein (Shalom) Foundation, founded in 2000 by her late father The Rev. Dr. Saboi Jum and other leaders.

Lahtaw’s study at CJP was facilitated at her father’s request by Carol Gowler MA ‘03 and David Tegenfeldt MA ‘04, HOPE International community development workers in Myanmar who attended at the same time. Gowler and Tegenfeldt have also facilitated and supported – through sponsorship or the securing of funds – the studies of other peacebuilders at CJP and SPI: Kanyaw Paw MA ‘04, S’Lont Mun MA ‘05, Seng Pan MA ‘10, Mung San Maji MA ‘13, and Tu Hkawn MA

‘14. They sponsored Shalom’s associate director Nang Raw to attend SPI. Shalom’s office manager Zau Ma Lahtaw has also attended SPI and another CJP graduate, Joanne Lauterjung MA ‘14, plays an ongoing in-country role.

Those connections have resulted in visits to the country by CJP faculty Jayne Docherty, Catherine Barnes, Ron Kraybill, John Paul Lederach and David Brubaker, whose input through workshops or long-term facilitation has influenced those serving in leadership roles in the country’s peace process.

Lahtaw said that her graduate studies led to a redesign of Shalom’s program and shaped its peacebuilding strategy. “Learning from here is totally reflected in what we do,” she said.

Shalom’s ongoing efficacy is built on a foundation established by Lahtaw’s father. Since the early 1980s, Saboi Jum was a local mediator between the government and the KIO; he facilitated a 1994 ceasefire agreement that would last for 17 years. Through that work and as director of Shalom until 2014, Saboi Jum earned the trust of the government and military as well as ethnic armed organizations, trust that Lahtaw has maintained and deepened.

With partners, Shalom nurtures youth as community leaders, has a trauma healing program, facilitated the forming of the Alliance for Gender Inclusion in the Peace Process, and in 2012 created the Civil Society Forum for Peace.

Lahtaw’s passion for her work comes from seeing the suffering and despair of people affected by Myanmar’s ongoing conflicts. “I have to see the change,” she said, “but I also recognize that peace will not materialize tomorrow.”

When she becomes frustrated by formal negotiations, she finds hope in grassroots efforts. “You see more options – you see more energy – at that level,” she said. —CHRISTOPHER CLYMER KURTZ

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PROGRAMS

The delegation from Brazil, October 2017.

PHOTO BY ANDREW STRACK

ZEHR INSTITUTE FOR RESTORATIVE JUSTICE

GLOBAL DELEGATIONS Institute hosts delegations from Brazil and Korea

INSPIRATION. REJUVENATION. Sharing a journey together.

Delegations from Brazil and Korea made pilgrimages to EMU this past academic year for multi-day programming hosted by the Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice.

Although preparing for such delegations requires a major commitment of time and resources, CJP Executive Director Daryl Byler said that “the payoff is priceless” for all groups involved.

The first such delegation came in 2015 and included six curriculum developers from Nepal’s National Judicial Academy in Kathmandu. CJP anticipates hosting a group from Colombia this next year.

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‘LIKE OXYGEN’ From across Brazil and with diverse professional backgrounds, 25 practitioners spent five days visiting Harrisonburg-area programs, contemplating practices and pedagogies, and witnessing shared values.

“It’s like oxygen,” said public prosecutor Danielle Arlé. “I can breathe again.”

“There is an Eastern saying that when the disciple is ready, the master comes,” Judge Leoberto Brancher said. “Restorative justice came to us in Brazil in the late 1990s and now almost 20 years later, we can come before the source … to review what we’ve been doing. It’s a time for tuning and beginning a new stage.”

“The source” is Howard Zehr, professor emeritus and the institute’s co-director, who led a session on restorative justice and serious crimes. Other sessions and site visits were hosted

by EMU-educated “disciples.”

Retired judge Isabel Lima, a professor at Catholic University in Salvador, developed the idea for the intensive seminar while a visiting professor at CJP in spring 2017.

In contrast to the United States, where a disparate group is driving the widening influence of restorative justice concepts, the Brazilian judiciary has played a key role in Brazil, Lima said.

Brancher, from Caxio do Sul, is one proponent who has made a nation-wide difference. He talks about restorative justice as an allegorical light during a dark time in his career, when he questioned the efficacy and meaning of his work with incarceration facilities for juveniles. Seen as both a punitive and protective system, “the way those two positions were

PROGRAMS

The South Korean delegation, January 2018.

PHOTO BY MACSON MCGUIGAN

disconnected made everything we did harmful because of misunderstood conceptions,” he said. “It was an existential question for me: What does life want from me as a judge? And also a professional question: How can I enforce the law? RJ came to me during that period as an answer.”

After nearly 20 years working to advance the concept, the five-day experience at EMU heralded a new stage, he said, towards “the creation of a more solid basis and more integrated leadership to give support and enable this process to be sustainable.”

‘WALKING THE SAME WAY WE WANTED TO GO’ Last year in South Korea, middle school teachers Yongseung Roh and Kyungyun Hwang read Howard Zehr’s seminal text Changing Lenses with a study group. This year, they were part of a South Korean delegation that came to EMU to learn directly about restorative justice from Zehr himself.

“We wanted to meet people who were walking toward the same way that we wanted to go,” the husband-wife duo wrote in an email.

The 11-day east coast tour for 21 teachers, students, community leaders and legal professionals was organized by the Korea Peacebuilding Institute (KOPI). Because participants already had a firm basis of RJ concepts, the purpose was to learn about the “spiritual, cultural, and historical backgrounds” of the movement, said KOPI director Jae Young Lee MA ‘03.

“If we believe RJ is a paradigm and not a program, it is important to know the Anabaptist/Mennonite tradition emphasizing peace and justice as a center of their faith.”

The visit was also an opportunity for “two-way” learning,

said CJP executive director Daryl Byler – for both CJP staff and graduates like Lee and fellow delegation participant Yoonseo Park MA ‘16.

“They and others have taken the restorative justice training they received at CJP and expanded its application to a variety of Korean contexts – including the criminal justice, educational and health systems, as well as in housing and church conflicts,” Byler said.

The delegation also visited the Mennonite Central Committee headquarters and Material Resources Center in Akron, Pennsylvania; met with shooting victims and family members in the Nickel Mines Amish community; and visited two Washington D.C. schools that practice restorative discipline.

—LAUREN JEFFERSON AND CHRISTOPHER CLYMER KURTZ

IN THE FUTURE… Members of the Brazil delegation are exploring attendance at a future Summer Peacebuilding Institute, and staying in touch through online forums and webinars.

CJP and KOPI have signed a three-year Memorandum of Understanding. The partnership will strengthen the regional capacity for peacebuilding in Korea and cross-promote CJP-KOPI professional trainings in restorative justice and trauma and resilience, as well as academic programs.

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PROGRAMS

NEW PUBLICATIONS FROM THE ZEHR INSTITUTE In 2018, look for a new anthology, Listening to the Movement: Essays on New Growth and New Challenges in Restorative Justice (Wipf and Stock, forthcoming), edited by Zehr Institute co-director Carl Stauffer and Ted Lewis, with the Center for Restorative Justice & Peacemaking at the University of Minnesota. The book collects diverse voices of RJ practitioners around the themes of developments, applications and current barriers to integrity.

“Pick up this book to explore the idea that restorative justice can no longer be confined to the realm of programs that serve clients,” says Stauffer. “Rather, it is becoming a social movement that promises significant social transformation on many societal levels, connecting systemic change with frameworks for individual and relational heart-change. Chief among those unfolding changes are matters of race relations and community empowerment.”

The book stems from a three-phase grant-funded project that included a facilitated consultation in 2015 of RJ leaders who grappled with future scenarios of where the field may be headed, as well as a larger conference in 2016, “Restorative Justice in Motion: Building a Movement.”

Find a copy of the Restorative Justice Listening Project Report, published in fall 2017, to hear what more than 130 RJ practitioners are saying about the state of the field. Listening sessions were hosted in communities in northern California, Minnesota, The Navajo Nation, Baltimore/Washington D.C./Virginia, and British Columbia in Canada. Report co-authors include lead listening session facilitator Sonya Shah with the Ahimsa Collective; Sarah King MA ‘17, victim assistance and restorative justice unit at the Minnesota Department of Corrections; and the Zehr Institute’s Carl Stauffer.

NEW CO-DIRECTOR This summer, Professor Johonna Turner joined Professor Carl Stauffer as a co-director of the Zehr Institute, founded six years ago. Professor Howard Zehr will be emeritus director and advisor. At EMU, Turner continues as assistant professor of restorative justice and peacebuilding, teaching undergraduate and graduate students. She and Stauffer will lead a strategic planning process in the fall to reassess the institute’s vision and mission. Additionally, Turner will facilitate a multi-year initiative called ByLD, an acronym for Black Youth Leadership Development, which includes creative writing workshops in six cities across the United States, an anthology of RJ-themed writings, and youth trainings to promote and build a network of youth RJ practitioners. (Photo by Macson McGuigan)

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Pamela Cytrynbaum acts as a legal observer during a Chicago peace march.

The former senior editor of InJustice Watch, Cytrynbaum now works as the restorative justice coordinator for the James B. Moran Center for Youth Advocacy. She was a participant in the spring 2018 Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice RJ and law enforcement course. (Courtesy photo)

FIRST ONLINE CLASS Among the 20 participants in the Zehr Institute’s first online course on law enforcement and restorative justice was Pam Cytrynbaum, a veteran RJ practitioner and investigative journalist, formerly the executive director of the Chicago Innocence Center. She is now in a new role as restorative justice coordinator for the James B. Moran Center for Youth Advocacy in Evanston, Illinois. The Moran Center is working to create a collaborative restorative justice hub and exploring the development of a restorative justice community court for Chicago’s North Shore, similar to the pioneering RJ community court that opened last year across the city in North Lawndale.

A longtime fan of Howard Zehr and the institute, Cytrynbaum was drawn to the course because of co-facilitator Vanessa Westley, a lieutenant with the Chicago Police Department. “Vanessa Westley is renowned and revered in the Chicago RJ community because of her incredibly rare position as a veteran law enforcement officer and a deeply committed leader of restorative practices,” Cytrynbaum said. “I appreciated how she made the philosophy of RJ a practical, do-able experience, which has helped me tremendously in focusing on what I could do, how I should begin, what my obstacles would be and how to engage the community in a collaborative way.”

Cytrynbaum would like to pursue graduate studies at EMU, but for now, courses and webinars are convenient professional development and networking opportunities. The spring course drew participants from two countries, eight states, and Washington D.C., representing invested advocates – lawyers, police, community organizers, teachers and a judge.

“I got a ton of practical information from speakers and participants,” she said. “Law enforcement representatives especially offered hugely helpful advice on how to engage with local police to begin restorative conversations; how to work within the law enforcement hierarchy; and how important it is to allow the work to grow organically. I also learned how to engage the whole community and how crucial it is to work with and not for community members and stakeholders.”

For more information on upcoming courses and webinars, visit www.zehr-institute.org.

PROGRAMS

STRATEGIES FOR TRAUMA AWARENESS AND RESILIENCE

WOZO A Haitian reed – wozo – inspires the music and themes of Pennsylvania-based Sopa Sol.

THE DESTRUCTIVE FORCES OF WIND, flood or machete do not defeat the resilient Haitian reed wozo. Instead, they only make way for it to grow back stronger. There’s even a proverb that Daryl Snider MA ‘12 learned in his years of service in Haiti: “We are wozo. We bend, but we do not break.”

It’s also what Snider and Frances Crowhill Miller GC ‘11 call their music- and story-based performances that explore grief and loss, trauma healing, resilience, restorative justice, structural justice and the legacy of colonialism. They first performed Wozo: Songs for Resilience in 2014, and released a CD with that title in 2015.

The Pennsylvania duo perform as Sopa Sol – they both sing, and Miller plays hang and violin and Snider guitar, sax, oboe and akogo – but Wozo specifically grew out their time together at CJP and studies in the Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience program.

In 2013, after Miller relocated near Snider in Lancaster County, the duo began collaborating to further incorporate their training with music. They realized that their songs fit onto STAR’s “snail model” – a spiral that shows various stops on the journey of breaking cycles of violence and building resilience.

STAR lead trainer Katie Mansfield also sees music as having that potential “to touch the specific and universal in our life experiences, and to integrate people’s embodied experience, emotions and stories,” she said. “It invites community and connection around both our traumas and our resilience, just as STAR promotes the integration of our experiences into our emerging identity as individuals and collectives.”

The album and program include songs such as “Hole in Her Heart,” about Snider’s widowed mother’s grief: “Not even the love of ten thousand good friends / eases pain she now feels just may never end.” Other songs – such as “We Are Wozo,” from a poem by a Haitian man – tell other’s stories.

Not all focus on brokenness and trauma; some are about reconnecting to community and finding joy. The heartening yet bittersweet “Glimmer of Sun” proclaims, “One of these mornings we shall rise / and the clouds will have broken… / Kiss the morning sunlight / and this path you have chosen.”

While not all Sopa Sol performances are specifically Wozo, many of their 40 events in the last several years contained elements of the project. As artists, they are “concerned about the musical elements, for sure,” Miller said, but the nature of

PHOTO BY ANNE SENSENIG

their music means they also have to think about whether they are inviting listeners into a helpful experience.

“The music is more than just entertainment,” Snider said.

“It’s important for us to take care of our audience. We want to be sure to bring people along in a careful way.”

Miller and Snider tailor each live performance to their audiences. A recent gig for a STAR course meant they could get into the “the harder stuff,” Miller said, while in more general settings, they stick with songs of resilience and “letting the music do more of the work.” She said it felt like two of her songs had been “written for” one particular sexual assault prevention event; at a hospice event, a simple group ritual that the duo incorporated felt “especially poignant.”

On their part, it takes trust and hope, they said – that the perspectives, stories and emotions woven into their performances will offer “reassurance of healing and life after brokenness,” Miller said. “There’s this balance of analyzing what we are presenting, but then at the same time there’s letting go and letting music do its thing beyond what you could ever plan or imagine.”

That can be difficult – “or perhaps impossible” – to measure, said Snider. “Changes that occur within people at such a visceral level may take years and other experiences to grow, and folks may never point to our music as the catalyst or seed. Our music may be only a small part of that change, that awakening.”

Wozo’s ongoing development is balanced with the rest of their lives – they both perform individually or with other ensembles, too, and Miller has a micro-dairy and two young children – but they see Wozo as a potential resource for many different groups, such as veterans and people who are incarcerated. —CHRISTOPHER CLYMER KURTZ

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Participation in STAR trainings often marks the beginning of extended interactions with STAR programming. Lucy Steinitz, senior technical advisor for protection with Catholic Relief Services, took STAR I with colleagues, which led to the facilitation of trainings in Bosnia and Tanzania, as well as Steinitz’s 2018 Summer Peacebuilding Institute workshop, “Singing to the Lions: Helping Children Respond Effectively to Violence and Abuse.”

PHOTOS BY MACSON MCGUIGAN

THE EXPANDING UNIVERSE OF STAR II For some participants, STAR I is an “entry point,” the first opportunity for an extended conversation about trauma and resilience, how traumagenic events can lead to cycles of violence, and personal and collective strategies for breaking free from those cycles.

STAR II invites a deeper conversation, creating a space of commitment, shared language and values in which participants consider “the roles they will play in their lives, organizations or communities to interrupt the cycle,” said Katie Mansfield, the program’s lead trainer.

STAR II participants are coached through the creation of a contextualized action plan to facilitate learning with others who experienced trauma. Some participants – such as an experienced NGO trainer who wants to integrate trauma and resilience into multi-national programming – come into the training with a clear idea of how to apply STAR concepts.

Others – perhaps a pastor who recognizes a need for trauma-informed religious retreat spaces – have an idea to explore.

And still others, benefiting from the space and collaborative input, find their own niche that uses their skills and experience.

Four such STAR II participants – Melanie Snyder, Susan Lamb, Celeste Thomas and Talibah Aquil – are working to enact systemic change through the sharing of concepts related to trauma, resilience and trauma-informed care.

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EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF REENTRY COLLABORATIVE: ‘STAR WAS ON MY RADAR’ As executive director of the Lancaster County (Pennsylvania) Reentry Management Organization, Melanie Snyder leads a collaborative group of more than 50 organizations “working to build the foundation for a trauma-informed criminal justice system,” she explained.

“We find that the vast majority of the justice-involved people we serve have experienced significant trauma in their lives, both prior to their criminal justice system involvement, and also as a direct result of the processes associated with arrest, court processes, incarceration, reentry and criminal justice supervision,” she said. “So an understanding of trauma is essential to changing how the criminal justice system responds.”

Though she had known about STAR for about eight years, it wasn’t until a training was offered in Lancaster in March 2017 that she was able to attend. The following November she attended STAR II in Harrisonburg.

Both trainings augmented knowledge and skills she’d acquired over many years in the field, including in a recent year-long fellowship during which she studied trauma and trauma-informed communities in the Pacific Northwest and Canada.

Over the past 18 months, the reentry organization has trained more than 1,100 people across several community sectors about trauma, resilience and trauma-informed care, Snyder said. Approximately 400 participants were corrections officers and parole officers; others included police officers, attorneys in the public defender’s office, staff at a youth detention facility, children and youth workers, court-appoint-

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Celeste Thomas, director of EMU’s Multicultural Student Services, worked with graduate student Talibah Aquil during a summer STAR II training. The partners are using STAR materials to develop a fall workshop for African and African-American students on the legacy of slavery.

ed special advocates, and other key stakeholders in the local criminal justice system.

Integrated into the curriculum are STAR materials that focus on the neuroscience of trauma, the cycles of violence, and the “breaking free” snail model.

EXPERIENCING REPERCUSSIONS OF A COMMUNITY TRAGEDY Hesston Community Foundation director Susan Lamb found STAR after her community experienced a mass shooting in 2016. She attended both trainings and then wrote a grant proposal to bring the EMU-based STAR team to central Kansas to train first responders and those working in education, ministry and health and human services.

Personal impact aside, Lamb said, the 2016 shooting was “the most pivotal professional experience in my 38-year career.” She says that she continues “to have concerns about the manner in which we have communally failed to process this tragedy.”

In the months after the shooting, more than $150,000 was donated to the community foundation. As director, Lamb was responsible for determining the monetary distributions, and she saw an opportunity for her community: STAR. The program had provided her with a framework for understanding her own and other’s reactions, and relationships with other participants who encouraged her to continue prioritizing concepts of trauma, resiliency and trauma-informed care.

She knows firsthand how empowering the curriculum is. “I have found that my brain is full but my heart is fuller when I reflect about STAR,” she said.

PARTNERS IN EXPLORING THE LEGACY OF SLAVERY Celeste Thomas brought a counselor’s insights to her STAR I training, having previously worked with survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. As director of EMU’s Multicultural Student Services, she works with and empowers students of all cultures.

Thomas was drawn to the organizational focus of her STAR II training, but didn’t have a clear idea of how she might specifically use the training until she connected with former Peace Corps worker Talibah Aquil, who was entering her second year of graduate studies at CJP. The women found a common interest and concern in the sometimes tense relationships between African and African American people.

“Both of us had fruitful and hurtful experiences with African people in different contexts, Talibah in her work and me working with students of diverse cultures here in Virginia,” Thomas said. “We did some soul-searching and had some deep discussions around this disconnect, and decided we needed to take some action because it’s not healthy for any of us. We share a common ancestry, but there is a lot of distrust and misunderstanding that is complicated by today’s political and social environment. We should be supporting each other and drawing strength from each other, but we need to have conversations first.”

When the partners invite students into discussion groups this fall, Thomas said that STAR materials on understanding and unpacking historic harms will be particularly beneficial.

A field trip to Charlottesville or Richmond to further explore issues of the legacy of slavery and white supremacy may culminate the series. —LAUREN JEFFERSON

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PROGRAMS

Jodi Dueck-Read MA ‘03 earned her doctorate in 2016 from University of Manitoba. She teaches at Menno Simons College in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and is a senior research assistant for Canadian Financial Diaries.

PHOTO BY ALISON RALPH

Khadija O. Ali MA ‘01, an electoral commissioner in Mogadishu, Somalia, earned a doctorate from George Mason University in 2014.

PHOTO BY JON ST YER

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PROGRAMS

MASTER’S DEGREE PROGRAMS

PEACEBUILDERS WITH DOCTORATES Theorizers, not theorists

THE EMPHASIS at CJP is markedly different from what graduates encounter in PhD programs.

Those programs, after all, are known for work done in isolation, fierce competition and putting theory first – whereas CJP teaches peacebuilding as “a team activity,” said Professor Jayne Docherty. CJP approaches theory not as more important than practice, but as a tool to inform and enrich creative and responsive practice. That means, Docherty said, that CJP students become “theorizers, not theorists” who know that “no one person gets this work done.”

Even so, nearly 10 percent of CJP graduates have gone on to doctoral studies – for which Docherty has a theory: “When you’re a practitioner and you attend a theoretically grounded, practice-oriented program like ours, you go back to the field and identify questions that you have to answer, problems that you just feel compelled to figure out.”

More than 60 CJP graduates have earned or are pursuing PhDs in law, literature, theology, trauma studies, social work, political science, peace studies, security and intelligence, leadership and more, from some 40 institutions in Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, South Africa and beyond.

Among them are Jodi Dueck-Read MA ‘03 and Khadija O. Ali MA ‘01.

‘I LONGED FOR CJP’ Jodi Dueck-Read earned a PhD in order to teach and research.

Her doctorate, completed in 2016, is in peace and conflict studies from the Mauro Centre for Peace and Justice, St. Paul’s College, University of Manitoba.

In years prior to her doctoral studies, Dueck-Read not only attended CJP but also worked with Mennonite Central Committee in Chile and Bolivia, where she taught conflict transformation at the Bolivian Evangelical University. In the U.S., she was program coordinator for the Zuni Avenue Peace Center and worked in migration and peacebuilding.

Writing a dissertation – hers was titled “Transnational Activism: Peacebuilding and Intersectional Identities in the Border Justice Movement” – can be “a long and lonely road,” she said.

PhD programs offer limited opportunities to practice, and the emphasis on publishing and competition is a “dominant

paradigm even in peace programs.”

While a doctoral student, “I longed for CJP,” she said, where “professors were encouraging and available.” Though her PhD program’s emphasis on writing and research did improve her skills, “CJP’s practical and lifelong connections are what peacebuilding is about.”

She now teaches conflict resolution studies at Menno Simons College in Winnipeg and is a senior research assistant for Canadian Financial Diaries.

HIGHER EDUCATION, EXPANDING FIELD Before attending CJP, Khadija O. Ali was a civil society and women’s rights activist, community worker, and participant in both national and international conferences addressing humanitarian needs, conflict resolution and reconciliation. She also founded the Somali NGO SAACID, with the mission to “help women, children and the poor achieve their full human potential.”

Her own potential prompted her to pursue more education, and in 2001 she earned a master’s degree in conflict transformation from CJP. After graduating, Ali became a parliamentarian and minister of state in the transitional national government in Somalia. As she began “working fully in peacebuilding and mediation efforts,” however, she realized that “the Somali conflict was no longer local,” but regional and international.

A PhD was “the logical next step,” she said. She finished her doctoral studies at George Mason University in 2014, writing a dissertation titled “The Role of Hegemonies within African Regional Organizations’ Interventions: A Comparative Study of Nigeria in ECOWAS’ Intervention in Liberia and Ethiopia in IGAD’s Intervention in Somalia.”

“Before my PhD, I worked as a practitioner in community mobilization and mediation, and most of my focus was on grassroots activities,” she said. Now, she serves as an electoral commissioner for Somalia’s National Independent Electoral Commission in Mogadishu.

“My focus shifted to policy issues and looking at the bigger picture,” she said. “Conflict requires macro-level analysis and interventions with policies that are appropriate at all levels.”

—CHRISTOPHER CLYMER KURTZ

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FEATURES

YoungJi Jang (center) with (left to right) CJP Professor Carl Stauffer, her mother Myounghee Lee, and Campbell University Restorative Justice Center office manager Joia Carson and director Jon Powell.

PHOTO BY JON ST YER

RESTORATIVE JUSTICE USED IN GROUNDBREAKING NORTH CAROLINA FELONY CASE In spring 2018, a restorative justice process was used in a groundbreaking felony case in North Carolina.

YoungJi Jang was involved in facilitated dialogue for the case as part of her practicum placement at the Restorative Justice Clinic (RJC) at Campbell Law School in Raleigh. [Jang graduated in May 2018.]

Jang said the case prompted “tears of happiness” and hugs, including for the offender from Judge Elaine O’Neal, who said following the case, “What does justice look like? Each of the people in this room might have different idea about what it looks like. However, this morning we know what it feels like.”

In March 2017, a bullet fired by James Scott Berish struck Deisy, a 10-year-old girl sleeping in a lower apartment in Durham. Berish initially fled the scene, but when he learned of the injury, Berish – the father of a two-year-old daughter – turned himself in to police.

The prosecuting attorney assigned to the case had attended an RJC restorative justice training, and realized this case was suited to the process, said RJC director Jon Powell.

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“Restorative justice is a theory of justice that recognizes that crime and wrongdoing does not only violate laws of the state but that it damages people, relationships and communities,” Powell told news reporters. “If crime creates harm, justice ought to create healing and that’s what we witnessed in this case.”

At a meeting during the week before the sentencing hearing, Berish apologized to his victim and was offered forgiveness. He had learned that she loved art, and so brought art supplies for her.

Berish could have faced over 10 years in prison for the shooting and possession of a stolen gun. Now, however, as part of the plea deal resulting from the year-long restorative justice process, he is to pay restitution to cover the costs of counseling, lost work time, and a new bed for the victim’s family. He will also speak at gun safety events, provide another child victim of gun violence with art supplies, never again own a weapon, and be on probation for up to two years, according to news reports.

Assistant district attorney Kendra Montgomery-Blinn told media that the process was part of a “sea change coming.”

“What I see in Mr. Berish is a man taking full responsibility, a man who made a mistake and owns it,” she said. “What I see in Deisy and her family is a family who was wounded physically and emotionally, a family who asked for healing, a family who got answers to their questions and a family who found peace and forgiveness.” —CHRISTOPHER CLYMER KURTZ

FOCUS

EVERYBODY NEEDS HEALING, EVERYBODY NEEDS TO BE AWARE OF WHAT IS TRAUMA … IN ALL THE SECTORS IN OUR COUNTRY.

GREEN STRING NETWORK’S ‘KUMEKUCHA’ SUPPORTS RESILIENCE AND STRENGTH In Kenya a new social healing and reconciliation program called Kumekucha – Kiswahili for “It’s a new dawn” – is empowering local leaders to create “sacred space” for people dealing with the country’s “massive” trauma, its director said.

Tecla Namachanja Wanjala MA ‘03 manages Kumekucha and is board chair for the program’s parent Green String Network (GSN).

A peacebuilder for nearly three decades, Wanjala came “face to face” with trauma in 1991 as a worker in a Somali refugee camp. She has served as commissioner and acting chairperson of Kenya’s Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission and in other roles with organizations such as PeaceNet and Pact International.

“Look at historic injustice and the trauma that it caused, the ethnic clashes and the trauma that it caused,” Wanjala said in a video about Kumekucha. “Everybody needs healing, everybody needs to be aware of what is trauma … in all the sectors in our country.”

The protracted violence faced by entire generations in Kenya has left people living in survival mode for decades, said GSN Executive Director Angi Yoder Maina. She attended the Summer Peacebuilding Institute in 2007 and 2009, and has worked to adapt STAR materials in her various professional contexts. She has worked for decades in peacebuilding, including with partners in Somalia, Ethiopia, South Sudan and Kenya, and as an advisor to the Wajir Peace University Trust.

GSN’s namesake green string represents the moment the cycle of violence is broken, and the organization’s logo, a mandala, represents wholeness. Founded last year, the organization has developed empirically validated materials and “low-resource methods” which have been adapted for use in Somalia, South Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya. It builds on local cultural practices and traditions to facilitate societal change for traumatized populations.

Kumekucha seeks to identify each village’s “Mama Anisa” – those individuals frequently called on to resolve local issues – and “support them in their own initiatives” using Kumeku-

Tecla Namachanja Wanjala PHOTO BY STUDIO MONA

cha tools such as its facilitator handbook titled I refuse to be a victim. I am a resource for peace, said Yoder Maina.

Kumekucha’s Kenya-specific curriculum uses watercolor paintings by Kenyan artists whose paintings depict authentic experiences within the cycle of violence including options for victims to respond with nonviolent action.

Kumekucha “educates even the uneducated ones,” one participant said in the video about the program.

“A 60-year-old can understand it, and it can better his life,” he said. “This initiative has really helped our community and is life-changing. Those lucky enough to benefit from it have better lives than before.”

The education, said another, has “opened my eyes to the burden of over 10 years and helped reduce it.”

Kumekucha organizers hope the program’s grassroots results will eventually have national-level impact.

—CHRISTOPHER CLYMER KURTZ

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GIVE AND LIVE GENEROUSLY “If we give sparingly, the program will be constricted and the harvest less than what it might be. If we give generously in response to a vision of hope as the farmer sows looking forward to a bountiful harvest, we will reap bountifully. I must respond to Jesus to put my light on a stand so that it gives light to all and testify that Marian and I have seen the truth of this in CJP.” During the past year, we said goodbye to two wonderful individuals, James and Marian Payne, who played an integral role in the founding and sustainability of CJP. James and Marian leave the world a better place because of their commitment to peacebuilding. Their gifts have dramatically increased CJP’s impact in the world. Some 638 CJP alumni, including 84 Fulbright scholars, are now doing peacebuilding work in 65 countries. Many of these graduates received scholarship awards funded by the Paynes, and most of them studied in the classroom space renovated with a generous gift from James and Marian.

As Daryl Byler shared at James’ memorial service in May (held on EMU’s campus at James’ request), the Paynes were cheerful givers, generous givers and strategic givers. Cheerful: As James reflected in 2005, “We give out of commitment, cheerfully, out of our abundance, having more than enough.” Generous: Often, when we provided several options for funding projects, they responded “Why can’t we fund them all?” Their combined lifetime and estate gifts to CJP total over $2.7 million. Strategic: From the beginning, they pushed CJP to develop its funding base and not to rely on their gifts alone. That led to the creation of this very publication, Peacebuilder, and the addition of my position, a CJP-focused development associate.

Early on, James and Marian recognized that financial assistance for CJP graduate students was one of our greatest needs. In 2011, they established the James and Marian Payne Family Endowed Scholarship with a gift of $50,000. After additional lifetime gifts, gifts in memoriam and a significant portion of their estate, this scholarship is now funded to $700,000 and will be able to provide a full-tuition scholarship each year to a CJP graduate student. This is our first full-tuition endowed scholarship – and we hope it is the first of many!

A top priority for CJP in the coming years is to build our endowment to enable us to offer competitive, meaningful scholarships to graduate students from around the world.

You have an opportunity to join James, Marian, and CJP in this great mission, and increase exponentially the global impact of our programs and alumni.

James and Marian wanted their giving to be a model for others: “In the right spirit, our giving should serve as a light and example. If we hide it, it cannot do so. We need to be an encouragement for others to give.” I hope this wonderful couple and their legacy at CJP inspire you, and I invite you to contact me with ideas for how you can give cheerfully, generously and strategically to CJP. LINDSAY E. MARTIN Associate Director of Development for CJP lindsay.e.martin@emu.edu 540-432-4581

emu.edu/cjp/support 32 | PEACEBUILDER | 2018-19

THANKS TO OUR GENEROUS DONORS! FOR FISCAL YEAR 2017-18, ENDING JUNE 30, 2018

PARTNERS IN PEACEBUILDING ($1,000+ TO CJP ANNUAL FUND) Anonymous (6) Alper Family Foundation Inc. Marcia Augsburger & Stephen Goff Myron & Esther Augsburger Murl Baker Robert & Elva Bare Dick & Jeanette Baum Ian & Beverly Birky Brenda Bowman Lena & Michael Brown David & Martha Brubaker E. Lynn Brubaker & Debra Hutchinson R. Bradley & Mary Ellen Chewning Eldon Christophel Al Claassen Tim & Rosita Derstine Angela Dickey Jayne Docherty Andy & Michelle Dula Bill & Diane Elliot Peter & Virginia Fitzner Bruce & Jeanette Flaming Margaret & Donald Foth Fred & Gail Fox Bob Gillette Wilma & Ray Gingerich Orpha Glick Stan & Susan Godshall Nancy Good Ray & Rosemary Hershberger Herb & Joanne High Dave & Cathleen Hockman-Wert Liz & Ralph Hofmeister Nelson Hoover Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Bob & Eloise Hostetler Alden & Louise Hostetter Doug Hostetter & Barbara Smolow Helen & Elvin Hurst Lois Kenagy John & Martha Kreider Wayne & Kathleen Kurtz J. E. & Emma Lehman

Ruby Lehman Ruth & Emerson Lesher Allen & Sara Jane Lind Joe & Constance Longacher Lois M. Martin Keith & Tammy May Tom & Barbara Melby Brad Miller & Jessica Yoder Fae Miller Neal & Karin Musselman Jason & Janelle Myers-Benner Elmo & Ella Pascale Daryl & Jane Peifer Kay Pranis Alice & Norman G Raiford Glenna Ramer & Jerry Sloan Calvin Redekop Barbara & Alan Robbins 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 Kirk & Mary Ann Shisler Gary Smucker Margaret Squier & Larry Levine Mary Beth & John Stauffer Donald & Mary Sundberg Stirling Edgar Stoesz Telemachus Foundation Vaughn & Inga Troyer United Service Foundation Inc. Lois & Paul Unruh Valley Friends Meeting Samuel H. Weaver Mary & Raymond Whalen Carroll & Nancy Yoder Linda Yoder Marilyn & Duane Yoder Marion & Eleanor Yoder Marshall & Julie Yoder Pearl E. Zehr Donald & Priscilla Ziegler Cheryl Zook

DONORS TO OTHER CJP FUNDS OF $1,000+ Anonymous (2) Alper Family Foundation Inc. Bridgeway Foundation Daryl & Cynthia Byler R. Bradley & Mary Ellen Chewning Eldon Christophel Mary Jean Cross & John Asa Hertzler Jason Garber & Karena Martin Andrew Gingerich & Retta Bruegger Orpha Glick Keith & Jenna Grubaugh Herb & Joanne High Dave & Cathleen Hockman-Wert Horizons Learning Foundation Ruth & Timothy Jost JustPax Duane & Joan Kauffman Phoebe Kilby & Barry Carpenter Klingstein Foundation Jennifer & Gregory E. Larson-Sawin Ruth & Emerson Lesher Jeanette & Jerry Martin Joseph & Rachel Martin David & Joan McRay Myron & Doreen Miller Nathan & Viola Miller Dieter & Susan Nickel James & Marian Payne Krista & David Powell Eric Reinford Norm Rittenhouse Verne & Carol Schirch John Sharp & Michele Miller Sharp Audra & Jerry Shenk Feryl & Connie Souder Jim & Carol Spicher Springdale Mennonite Church Darren & Audra Stauffer Edgar Stoesz Kris Stoesz Dan & Angela Stoltzfus Barbara & David Swan Waterford Mennonite Church Claire Whiting Jay & Nancy Yoder Donald & Priscilla Ziegler

1200 Park Road, Harrisonburg VA 22802-2462

1994—Present

GLOBAL IMPACT

Master’s degree or graduate certificate: 638 alumni in 65 countries Academic and non-degree training at EMU SPI - Summer Peacebuilding Institute: More than 3,300 alumni in 124 countries STAR - Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience: More than 5,150 participants from 62 countries Peacebuilding institutes modeled on EMU’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute: Located in nine 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.

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