Training peacebuilding leaders: challenges faced and lessons learned

Individual articles from the Summer 2020 issue of Intersections will be posted on this blog twice per week. The full issue can be found on MCC’s website. This article consist of five reflections which will be posted separately.

As peacebuilding has grown and flourished as an academic field and a practical discipline over the past several decades, MCC has collaborated with Mennonite and Mennonite Brethren colleges, universities and seminaries in the United States and Canada in equipping church and community leaders from around the world with peacebuilding skills and knowledge. Through Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Canadian Mennonite University, Conrad Grebel University College, Eastern Mennonite University and Fresno Pacific University, MCC has sponsored hundreds of students for short-term peacebuilding training as well as academic degrees in peacebuilding over the past three decades (with a significant majority of those trainees studying at Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding and its predecessors). During the past quarter century, MCC has also worked closely with groups of committed peacebuilders who sought to organize contextualized peacebuilding training opportunities in their parts of the world. Over the following pages, peacebuilders in African and Asian contexts reflect on the challenges they have faced, the successes they have enjoyed and the lessons they have learned from organizing peacebuilding trainings in their regional contexts.—The editors.

School of Peace

Interfaith participants at the three-month School of Peace for young adults from across Asia typically hold a debate as an exercise in fostering critical thinking. Each year the debate resolution is different. One year the resolution was: “It is not necessary to do peacemaking.” Divided into two groups, the fifteen young participants were given a day to prepare to defend or oppose the statement.

Let’s not do peacemaking. Let’s transform the injustices that block peace from flowing.

As the debate began, those defending the resolution (that is arguing against the necessity of doing peacemaking) were having a difficult time finding good arguments that could hold up against the opposition. They were losing badly. Then one young woman stood up to make her argument in support of the resolution, offering this argument:

I live next to a small stream. When I was a child, we used to play in its crystal-clear water. We could even drink it. Later, the stream became polluted with plastic and other garbage. Our parents no longer let us play in it. We thought about finding some way to filter the water to make it clean, but we realized that the water originally was very clean. If we wanted to enjoy the stream again, we would have to investigate where the pollution came from and find a way to solve that.

As a Christian I believe that peace is a gift from God. It is here all around us. But so many people can’t experience it because injustices pollute it. We don’t need to do peacemaking.  Rather we need to find out the source of injustice and transform that. Then beautiful peace, like a clear, sparkling stream, can flow to everyone. Let’s not do peacemaking. Let’s transform the injustices that block peace from flowing.

Her argument reflected one of the principal tenets of the School of Peace. During our intense three months together, we urge participants to seek the root causes of conflict and non-peace and be willing to work for structural change at the local and national levels. Only when our systems and structures emphasize justice and righteousness for all can God’s peace flow freely to all.

In the opening ceremony of the School of Peace in Vishtar, Indiai, Poli Drong of Bangladesh lights a candle from the center flame to place in the open spiral of flowers, symbolizing how the world expands as people learn to be open to those who are different from themselves. (MCC photo/Max Ediger)

Working for structural transformation is very difficult and requires much analysis and planning. While it may often be easy to respond to conflicts with simple models and projects, the result may not be long-lasting. Our goal must be to be effective rather than busy—and being effective requires creative strategies to address the roots of injustice.

As we explore more deeply the roots of conflict, we find that we must first look at the issue of identity. All of us have multiple identities and no two of us have the exact same identity. This diversity is beautiful and is generally celebrated. However, when any one of us begins to feel that one of our identities, such as a religious, ethnic, gender or ideological identity, is superior to others, the roots of conflict have been laid. Conflicts at the local, national or even global level can grow out of this sense of superiority because it gives us the supposed “right” to exploit or oppress the “other.”

If we recognize that identity can be the cause of serious conflicts, we also begin to realize that violence against others will not bring any lasting solution to conflicts. Identity is a social construct and thus can be changed through creative dialogue. It is of course not easy to transform social constructs, but if we wish to allow peace to flow freely to all, we must start here. This is one way to stop being busy and begin being effective.

Max Ediger directs the School of Peace. He worked with MCC in southeast Asia for about 40 years and now lives in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

---

Learn more

Canadian School of Peacebuilding at Canadian Mennonite University. https://csop.cmu.ca/.

Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University. https://emu.edu/cjp/.

Center for Peacemaking at Fresno Pacific University. https://www.fresno.edu/visitors/center-peacemaking.

Great Lakes Initiative. https://www.gliinstitute.org/.

Mindanao Peacebuilding Institute. https://www.mpiasia.net/.

Northeast Asia Peacebuilding Institute. https://www.facebook.com/narpipeace/.

Peace and Conflict Studies at Conrad Grebel University College. https://uwaterloo.ca/master-peace-conflict-studies/.

Theology and Peace Studies at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. https://www.ambs.edu/academics/ma-peace-studies.

Training peacebuilding leaders: challenges faced and lessons learned

Individual articles from the Summer 2020 issue of Intersections will be posted on this blog twice per week. The full issue can be found on MCC’s website. This article consist of five reflections which will be posted separately.

As peacebuilding has grown and flourished as an academic field and a practical discipline over the past several decades, MCC has collaborated with Mennonite and Mennonite Brethren colleges, universities and seminaries in the United States and Canada in equipping church and community leaders from around the world with peacebuilding skills and knowledge. Through Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Canadian Mennonite University, Conrad Grebel University College, Eastern Mennonite University and Fresno Pacific University, MCC has sponsored hundreds of students for short-term peacebuilding training as well as academic degrees in peacebuilding over the past three decades (with a significant majority of those trainees studying at Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding and its predecessors). During the past quarter century, MCC has also worked closely with groups of committed peacebuilders who sought to organize contextualized peacebuilding training opportunities in their parts of the world. Over the following pages, peacebuilders in African and Asian contexts reflect on the challenges they have faced, the successes they have enjoyed and the lessons they have learned from organizing peacebuilding trainings in their regional contexts.—The editors.

Mindanao Peacebuilding Institute (MPI)

Mindanao, the second largest island in the southern Philippines, has historically, geographically and socio-culturally been distinct from the rest of the country. It has witnessed colonial control and occupation over the past two centuries, leading to struggles over identity and governance. Conflicts between Indigenous political interests and external stakeholders have caused the area to become a crucible for violence and fear.

Several community leaders from Mindanao participated in Eastern Mennonite University’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute in the 1990s. Together, these trainees formed a critical mass of peacebuilders passionate about promoting peace in strife-ravaged Mindanao. Encouraged by a wide variety of peacebuilding practitioners and scholars, along with collaborative support from Catholic Relief Services (CRS), Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) and MCC, this group of committed peacemakers founded the Mindanao Peacebuilding Institute (MPI) with the mission of bringing together peace practitioners to learn from one another and of equipping people interested in becoming peacebuilders with knowledge and practical skills.

“I would like to change history for my children, the bloody history of conflict in Mindanao,” said Musa Sanguila of Kauswagen, Mindanao island in the Philippines. “We change something for good starting from inside ourselves.” Musa was among 165 participants from the Philippines and 16 other Asian countries attending the Mindanao Peacebuilding Institute (MPI) in Davao City, Mindanao, Phillipines from May 1 to 19, 2002. (MCC photo/Jon Rudy)

Creating a space for mutual sharing and support among peacebuilding practitioners has been central to the mission of MPI. Participants in MPI workshops learn not only from one another but also from the context of Mindanao, with participants visiting organizations working towards peace on the island and having practitioners from Mindanao teach and share at MPI courses.

MPI holds an Annual Training Institute for three weeks each spring during which an average of 100 individuals from the Asia-Pacific region and beyond attend courses in a residential setting. There are courses designed for newcomers to the field as well as advanced and innovative courses relevant to new conflict realities and peacebuilding challenges. Each year, around 20 nations are represented at MPI and this rich diversity is fully celebrated during evening activities. The openings and closings of each week of the Institute are festive, with cultural presentations from Mindanao serving as a highlight. The ambience and structure of the Institute are highly conducive to relationship building for solidarity among peacebuilders.

MPI is implementing a grassroots Peacebuilding Mentors Program to enhance the mentoring ability of on-the-ground peacebuilders as they nurture others in their own contexts.

Besides the annual training institute, MPI strives to provide relevant programs to strengthen peacebuilding. It has conducted a resource-based conflict and peacebuilding training program that focuses on the Indigenous peoples of Mindanao and the hazards they face from the mining industry. MPI continues to tailor training for specific sectors and regional issues. Currently, MPI is implementing a grassroots peacebuilding mentors program to enhance the mentoring ability of on-the-ground peacebuilders as they nurture others in their own contexts. These ongoing training activities are organized and coordinated by a small but highly motivated staff working in the MPI secretariat based in Davao, Mindanao.

MCC has been privileged over the past two decades to be a partner and friend of MPI and its vibrant network of peacebuilders committed to the nonviolent transformation of conflict in Mindanao and beyond.

Sriprakash Mayasandra is MCC representative for Chad. He has worked for MCC in Palestine and Israel, Syria and, most recently, across Asia as MCC’s regional peacebuilding coordinator for Asia and as interim representative for northeast Asia.

---

Learn more

Canadian School of Peacebuilding at Canadian Mennonite University. https://csop.cmu.ca/.

Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University. https://emu.edu/cjp/.

Center for Peacemaking at Fresno Pacific University. https://www.fresno.edu/visitors/center-peacemaking.

Great Lakes Initiative. https://www.gliinstitute.org/.

Mindanao Peacebuilding Institute. https://www.mpiasia.net/.

Northeast Asia Peacebuilding Institute. https://www.facebook.com/narpipeace/.

Peace and Conflict Studies at Conrad Grebel University College. https://uwaterloo.ca/master-peace-conflict-studies/.

Theology and Peace Studies at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. https://www.ambs.edu/academics/ma-peace-studies.

Training peacebuilding leaders: challenges faced and lessons learned

Individual articles from the Summer 2020 issue of Intersections will be posted on this blog twice per week. The full issue can be found on MCC’s website. This article consist of five reflections which will be posted separately.

As peacebuilding has grown and flourished as an academic field and a practical discipline over the past several decades, MCC has collaborated with Mennonite and Mennonite Brethren colleges, universities and seminaries in the United States and Canada in equipping church and community leaders from around the world with peacebuilding skills and knowledge. Through Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Canadian Mennonite University, Conrad Grebel University College, Eastern Mennonite University and Fresno Pacific University, MCC has sponsored hundreds of students for short-term peacebuilding training as well as academic degrees in peacebuilding over the past three decades (with a significant majority of those trainees studying at Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding and its predecessors). During the past quarter century, MCC has also worked closely with groups of committed peacebuilders who sought to organize contextualized peacebuilding training opportunities in their parts of the world. Over the following pages, peacebuilders in African and Asian contexts reflect on the challenges they have faced, the successes they have enjoyed and the lessons they have learned from organizing peacebuilding trainings in their regional contexts.—The editors.

Northeast Asia Regional Peacebuilding Institute (NARPI)

The Northeast Asia Regional Peacebuilding Institute has its ironic beginnings in the service of its director, Jae Young Lee, with the military of the Republic of Korea (ROK, or South Korea) in the early 1990s, when he first become interested in peace. Jae Young had been a marine for 26 months of mandatory military service at the age of 22, service required of all young Korean men. He was stationed along the border between ROK and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea), tasked with watching the North Korean side of the border through a telescope at the western edge of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). When the first leader of North Korea, Kim Il Sung, died in 1994, the fate of the entire Korean Peninsula was suddenly thrust into uncertainty, including the prospect of potential war. Jae Young had to spend an entire week in a trench with heavy weapons along with thousands of soldiers at the border to carry out the mission of shooting anybody attempting to cross it. During that week, he began to realize that true peace could only be possible through non-military approaches. No one can achieve peace by pointing a gun at another’s head.

After completing his military service, Jae Young went on to study at Canadian Mennonite Bible College and the conflict transformation program at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) in Virginia, completing a master’s degree at the latter. After struggling to understand the concept of Christian pacifism, Jae Young eventually came to agree with the Mennonite belief in the gospel of peace. As a result of his military experiences and peacebuilding training, Jae Young developed a firm conviction that peacebuilding training is a more practical way to make peace than investments in the military. In 2001, Jae Young became one of three founding members of the Korea Anabaptist Center (KAC), serving as its peace program coordinator. After witnessing the fragile peace maintained by North and South Korea at reciprocal gunpoint, and realizing that many of the peacebuilding organizations in northeast Asia were ill-equipped in conflict resolution and peacemaking skills, Jae Young wrote a working paper in 2006 outlining his vision for a peacebuilding training program for community leaders from across northeast Asia.

The bottom-up approach of peacebuilding education is slow, but it is also the path for sustainable change.

After a couple of years of discussion with MCC, KAC received a grant in 2009 to pilot this vision. Jae Young traveled to Japan, mainland China and Taiwan to meet people who shared a similar vision: to start a regional peacebuilding institute in northeast Asia. Representatives of several civil society peace groups from all over the region met together for the first time in 2009 to brainstorm what this regional peacebuilding project would look like. These efforts eventually coalesced in the formation of the Northeast Asia Regional Peacebuilding Institute (NARPI), with NARPI holding its first Summer Peacebuilding Training in Seoul and Inje in August 2011. NARPI has organized annual summer peacebuilding trainings in each of the subsequent years, moving the location of the training around northeast Asia. NARPI participants have come primarily from South Korea, Japan, Mainland China, Taiwan and Mongolia.

The NARPI Summer Peacebuilding Training is a 14-day program. Participants divide into three or four courses for five days, from morning to early evening. For the next three days, all participants spend time together on field trips. We have traveled together to a DMZ observatory, to peace memorials and museums, a ger (a traditional Mongolia dwelling in the form of a tent covered in skin and felt), sites of historical massacres and sites of hope. Following the field trips, there is a second week of training, also five days, during which participants continue to learn, divided into three or four courses, before departing for their homes.

Many peacebuilding institutes in the world are located in areas with current or recent direct conflict. While northeast Asia has not experienced intense direct conflict since the Korean War, the unresolved historical conflict (both the Asia-Pacific War and the Cold War) and the structural violence in the region affect people’s daily lives. Through NARPI, we have learned that people want safe spaces to talk about sensitive issues and to share their own perspectives and experiences.

From left, Yur-Shyuan Chang (Angela), Shiori Honzaki and Hirona Yaguchi stand in a circle
talking during an activity in the Conflict and Peace Framework course for participants in the
August 2018 Northeast Asia Regional Peacebuilding Institute (NARPI), held in Republic of Korea (South Korea). MCC funds scholarships for under-resourced participants. MCC and NARPI have partnered together since 2011 to provide training in peacebuilding, conflict transformation, restorative justice and mediation through the summer peacebuilding institutes. (Photo courtesy of NAPRI)

NARPI’s approach to peacebuilding assumes that durable peacebuilding starts at the community level. The bottom-up peacebuilding education approach is slow, but it is also the path for sustainable change. NARPI courses equip participants with both theory and practical skills to implement in their home communities. The field trips are also a powerful part of the training experience. People who have been taught different histories, written to increase nationalism and distrust of neighboring countries, come together to learn history first-hand, often from the voices of the victims of war. We have also witnessed that a new understanding of regional identity can grow from relationship building. Strengthening international relations is not just a matter for governments: it also needs to happen at the people-to-people level.

A simple goal that we have for NARPI is that this regional project will survive for ten years. This year, 2020, marks ten years, so we are nearly there! Survival may seem like quite a low bar to set, but it is also significant, since NARPI is the first regional peacebuilding institute in Northeast Asia, a region where the field of peacebuilding is still quite new.

We have witnessed how NARPI Summer Peacebuilding Trainings have had an individual impact on the participants. Many people apply their learning from NARPI to their work, family and community lives. Some decide to join local peacebuilding efforts or peace studies programs after their NARPI experience. The relationship-building aspect of NARPI has been powerful for participants, serving as the basis from which they start to form a new sense of regional identity. As NARPI grows, the number of returning participants also increases, a sign that this is a valuable time of learning, sharing and networking for people who are seeking to build an alternative future in their communities and in this region.

We have witnessed that a new understanding of regional identity can grow from relationship building. Strengthening international relations is not just a matter for governments: it also needs to happen at the people-to-people level.

Several of NARPI’s challenges resemble challenges faced by other peacebuilding organizations. Most years we face a funding challenge. Although a program fee is required from NARPI participants, these funds do not cover all training expenses. We have chosen to keep the program fee relatively low so that NARPI trainings can be accessible to people from all parts of the region. MCC offers scholarship funds each year to provide partial support for individuals who would otherwise not be able to join NARPI.

One unique challenge to NARPI, as a mobile peacebuilding institute, is that the planning each year is shared between the local host and the NARPI administrative team. Distance and language barriers make the planning work more complicated, but we are grateful for lessons learned as we work together to overcome these challenges.

The greatest challenges for NARPI, though, do not come from funding or from technical planning aspects, but from ongoing political tensions in Northeast Asia. We aim to provide safe space for all people who gather at NARPI, but in reality it is impossible to create a completely safe space for everyone. We therefore work to provide the most positive space possible within the realities of our region.

We continue to work toward a dream that one day there will be more peacebuilding institutes than military academies in Northeast Asia. In 2019, Nobuya Fukuda, who hosted the 2017 NARPI Summer Peacebuilding Training in Okinawa, Japan, and has also joined NARPI several years as a participant, opened the Okinawa Bridge Builders Institute (OBI) to offer educational opportunities to explore how to build peace in the colonized and militarized context of Okinawa. We see OBI as one of the fruits of NARPI, and we hope that peacebuilding efforts in northeast Asia will multiply.

Jae Young Lee directs the Northeast Asia Regional Peacebuilding Institute. Karen Spicher is NARPI’s communications coordinator.

---

Learn more

Canadian School of Peacebuilding at Canadian Mennonite University. https://csop.cmu.ca/.

Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University. https://emu.edu/cjp/.

Center for Peacemaking at Fresno Pacific University. https://www.fresno.edu/visitors/center-peacemaking.

Great Lakes Initiative. https://www.gliinstitute.org/.

Mindanao Peacebuilding Institute. https://www.mpiasia.net/.

Northeast Asia Peacebuilding Institute. https://www.facebook.com/narpipeace/.

Peace and Conflict Studies at Conrad Grebel University College. https://uwaterloo.ca/master-peace-conflict-studies/.

Theology and Peace Studies at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. https://www.ambs.edu/academics/ma-peace-studies.

Training peacebuilding leaders: challenges faced and lessons learned

Individual articles from the Summer 2020 issue of Intersections will be posted on this blog twice per week. The full issue can be found on MCC’s website. This article consist of five reflections which will be posted separately.

As peacebuilding has grown and flourished as an academic field and a practical discipline over the past several decades, MCC has collaborated with Mennonite and Mennonite Brethren colleges, universities and seminaries in the United States and Canada in equipping church and community leaders from around the world with peacebuilding skills and knowledge. Through Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Canadian Mennonite University, Conrad Grebel University College, Eastern Mennonite University and Fresno Pacific University, MCC has sponsored hundreds of students for short-term peacebuilding training as well as academic degrees in peacebuilding over the past three decades (with a significant majority of those trainees studying at Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding and its predecessors). During the past quarter century, MCC has also worked closely with groups of committed peacebuilders who sought to organize contextualized peacebuilding training opportunities in their parts of the world. Over the following pages, peacebuilders in African and Asian contexts reflect on the challenges they have faced, the successes they have enjoyed and the lessons they have learned from organizing peacebuilding trainings in their regional contexts.—The editors.

Africa Peacebuilding Institute (API)

The Africa Peacebuilding Institute (API) started in 2001, extending the peacebuilding work of Canadian peacebuilder Janet Schmidt. Since then, API has organized yearly training workshops for African peace practitioners seeking to study and reflect on what makes for peace in African contexts. First held in Zambia at Mindolo Ecumenical Foundation, API moved to South Africa in 2013. API envisioned itself as a geographic as well as spiritual “basin” holding and channeling the water of life, the cleansing and powerful energy of peace and reconciliation in the name of Christ. Arising out of this basin, API hoped, would be an alliance of people gathering under the mantle of peace education, study and application, who would work together in a variety of concrete ways for peace in their communities.

Some participants who came to API believing in the power of violence became convinced nonviolent approaches are more effective in resolving conflict, with more sustainable outcomes.

Over 500 participants have taken part in API over the past 19 years. Participants include Christian pastors, church officials, teachers and grassroots peace practitioners. Both Christians and Muslims take part in API. Participants primarily come from sub-Saharan Africa countries, representing MCC’s church and community-based partner organizations. API participants are nominated to attend because of their peace-related work or interests in incorporating peacebuilding approaches into their relief and development work. API also welcomes Anabaptist church leaders from across the region in order to equip them in thinking about how peacebuilding is part of the church’s witness.

API has provided short-term intensive training programs on a range of peacebuilding topics, including conflict analysis, conflict transformation, restorative justice, trauma healing, Anabaptist peacemaking and leadership. API has played a critical role in individual transformation. Across the continent, many participants have reported changes of mindset, leading them to become change agents in their communities. For example, some participants who came to API believing in the power of violence became convinced nonviolent approaches are more effective in resolving conflict, with more sustainable outcomes. API has also offered an opportunity for African participants from different backgrounds to network and learn from one another.

API has certainly encountered some challenges in its trainings. So, for example, participants sometimes at first resist API’s message that working for gender equality is an essential dimension of peacebuilding, rejecting the idea initially on the grounds that the press for gender equality is a colonial import and represents the destruction of African values. Or, to take another example, API participants sometimes also express suspicion of peace committees or peace clubs, viewing them as taking away power from traditional leaders or school leaders in conflict management. For example, some communities in Burundi that adopted peace committees faced resistance from traditional leaders who saw in peace committees the loss of their arbitration powers.

Paul Oyelaran, left, Ahmed Saliju (holding ballon) and Sadiya Ibrahim participate in an eggdropping exercise with Nigerian alumni of API and the West Africa Peacebuilding Institute. (MCC photo/Dave Klassen)

Skills acquired at API have been put to good use. In 2006, for example, in protest of poor democratic practices and human rights violations in many African countries, API participants signed a petition to advocate to the African Union to strengthen democracy on the continent. Skills acquired at API also led to the birth of numerous peace infrastructures, such as the establishment of peace clubs in schools in Zambia in 2006. Peace clubs have now spread to over 13 African countries and have been introduced beyond Africa.

The African continent has a rich tradition of dealing with conflict in peaceful ways. But due to armed conflicts and other forms of violence, those values were eroded in many communities. API has sought to restore traditional peacebuilding values and approaches. For instance, API trainers have explained that working for gender equality is not a foreign import to Africa. Traditionally, women’s wisdom protects and sustains communities because women participate in decision-making. Over time, this traditional valuing of women’s wisdom was lost in many African contexts. Through peace education and initiatives, such as the introduction of women’s situation rooms, women are more and more actively involved in leadership and other decision-making processes. API has also worked to restore the value of circle approaches to resolving conflict and to underscore the importance of the traditional value of ubuntu (I am because you are). In South Africa, the traditional home of ubuntu, xenophobic attacks against African foreign nationals have been on the increase. In response to these attacks, pastor Samson Mataboro, an API alumnus, uses restorative justice approaches. The efforts by Pastor Mataboro and others to promote ubuntu and circle processes for addressing conflict have helped foster spaces in South Africa where South Africans and foreign nationals live together peacefully. There are similar experiences in Kenya, where Kikuyu and Luo children lived peacefully together in the 2007 post-election ethnic violence in Mt. Elgon, thanks to the work peace clubs had done to promote inter-ethnic solidarity.

API has worked to restore the value of circle approaches to resolving conflict and to underscore the importance of the traditional value of ubuntu (I am because you are).

API alumni are creating safe spaces for dealing with issues of trauma across the African continent. Peacebuilding efforts linked to API have seen former prisoners in Burundi, Zambia, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) and Uganda reconciling with their communities and vowing not to seek revenge against their former enemies anymore. One can say without any doubt that the API is laying a strong foundation for peace in the African continent by raising up people equipped in conflict prevention and resolution, community building and reconciliation based on Christian principles of nonviolence, justice, dignity of the human person and right relationships.

Mulanda Jimmy Juma is MCC representative for its program in DR Congo and Angola. He previously worked as MCC peacebuilding coordinator for southern Africa.

---

Learn more

Canadian School of Peacebuilding at Canadian Mennonite University. https://csop.cmu.ca/.

Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University. https://emu.edu/cjp/.

Center for Peacemaking at Fresno Pacific University. https://www.fresno.edu/visitors/center-peacemaking.

Great Lakes Initiative. https://www.gliinstitute.org/.

Mindanao Peacebuilding Institute. https://www.mpiasia.net/.

Northeast Asia Peacebuilding Institute. https://www.facebook.com/narpipeace/.

Peace and Conflict Studies at Conrad Grebel University College. https://uwaterloo.ca/master-peace-conflict-studies/.

Theology and Peace Studies at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. https://www.ambs.edu/academics/ma-peace-studies.

Training peacebuilding leaders: challenges faced and lessons learned

Individual articles from the Summer 2020 issue of Intersections will be posted on this blog twice per week. The full issue can be found on MCC’s website. This article consist of five reflections which will be posted separately.

As peacebuilding has grown and flourished as an academic field and a practical discipline over the past several decades, MCC has collaborated with Mennonite and Mennonite Brethren colleges, universities and seminaries in the United States and Canada in equipping church and community leaders from around the world with peacebuilding skills and knowledge. Through Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Canadian Mennonite University, Conrad Grebel University College, Eastern Mennonite University and Fresno Pacific University, MCC has sponsored hundreds of students for short-term peacebuilding training as well as academic degrees in peacebuilding over the past three decades (with a significant majority of those trainees studying at Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding and its predecessors). During the past quarter century, MCC has also worked closely with groups of committed peacebuilders who sought to organize contextualized peacebuilding training opportunities in their parts of the world. Over the following pages, peacebuilders in African and Asian contexts reflect on the challenges they have faced, the successes they have enjoyed and the lessons they have learned from organizing peacebuilding trainings in their regional contexts.—The editors.

Great Lakes Peacebuilding Institute (GLPI)

The Great Lakes Peacebuilding Institute (GLPI) is a regional, bilingual peacebuilding institute which has provided training opportunities for peace and development workers from Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) since its founding in 2004. In recent years, GLPI has also received participants from other countries in East, Central and West Africa. Founded by three local organizations—the Ministry for Peace and Reconciliation under the Cross (MIPAREC) in Burundi, Friends Peace House (FPH) in Rwanda and Conseil pour la Paix et Reconciliation (COPARE) in DR Congo—GLPI, with support from MCC, has trained more than 400 participants over the past sixteen years.

GLPI’s mission is to develop transformative leadership and peacebuilding skills among civil society leaders serving in countries marred by violent conflict and insecurity. While many countries in Africa have achieved relative stability, for others their potential for growth and development has been disturbed by recurring cycles of violence and repression. GLPI was established to try to break these cycles through the formation of leaders equipped with peacebuilding skills. GLPI brings together individuals committed to acquiring knowledge, attitudes and skills for preventing and transforming conflicts, while gaining new insights into the importance of locally-led processes and the creation of just social structures that bring about more peaceful societies. GLPI’s theory of change is that the more individuals trained in the theories and practices of peace, the more processes and structures can be created and sustained which counter the protracted nature of violence in the region.

GLPI’s mission is to develop transformative leadership and peacebuilding skills among civil society leaders serving in countries marred by violent conflict and insecurity.

For sixteen years now, GLPI had achieved significant growth. It started out as a francophone seminar (formerly called the Great Lakes Peacebuilding Seminar) for MCC staff and partners in Rwanda, Burundi and DR Congo, modeling itself on the Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI) at Eastern Mennonite University in the United States  Its main training venue has been a month-long October Institute held in Burundi, which offers four one-week courses on conflict analysis, peacebuilding frameworks, trauma healing and peacebuilding and development. Over time, GLPS transformed into a bilingual institute, now called GLPI, offering courses both to Francophones and Anglophones in the wider Great Lakes region.

In 2013, GLPI started offering special modules, apart from the October Institute, which have been hosted in Rwanda as well as Burundi. These special modules offered participants the chance to reflect on the biblical foundations for peacebuilding, learn how to organize and lead youth peace clubs, build skills in leadership and good governance and become proficient in reflective peace practices. Around this time, GLPI began welcoming staff from other peacebuilding and development organizations beyond the circle of MCC and its partners. A regional GLPI alumni network started to develop, aimed at fostering learning exchanges among alumni and improving regional peacebuilding connections.

In 2019, another breakthrough was achieved when GLPI offered a two-track October Institute for the first time in its history: a peacebuilding track and a new organizational and community development track. The peacebuilding track remained the same except for shifting the focus of the fourth course to examine conflict sensitivity and principles of “do no harm.” The development track offers four new courses on organizational and community leadership; fundraising and resource mobilization; project design and management; and monitoring and evaluation. The introduction of a development track allowed GLPI to attract peacebuilding and development practitioners from across Africa—not only from Burundi, Rwanda and DR Congo, but also Kenya, Uganda, South Sudan, Burkina Faso, Chad, Ivory Coast and Angola. The successful 2019 October Institute opened up new partnerships with local and international organizations and increased the number of participants three-fold. This strong desire for development courses at GLPI highlighted an intense desire among African civil society organizations to integrate development and peacebuilding more effectively.

This strong desire for development courses at GLPI highlighted an intense desire among African civil society organizations to integrate development and peacebuilding more effectively.

GLPI sees its impact through participants who return to their respective organizations and communities with more positive energy and useful learnings they can incorporate into their daily work. Some participants have created their own organizations that promote peacebuilding and development programs. Some have organized local peace committees, youth peace clubs and savings groups. Others are engaged in leading trauma healing workshops and supporting women in acquiring livelihood opportunities. Still others have become part of local, regional and national structures that promote mediation and reconciliation processes such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) or the mediation commission of the East African Community (EAC).

The stories and testimonies shared by GLPI alumni are telling. A women’s rights advocate from Burundi who attended GLPI in 2016 shared: “After GLPI training, I have been organizing trauma healing workshops with women who have been made victims of sexual harassment and have involved them in different livelihood and savings opportunities. GLPI inspired me to understand that we need to find another approach to empower women economically as this is the root cause of their suffering.” A peace journalist from DR Congo who participated in 2017 reflected: “Peace must be an everyday commitment by accepting other people regardless of backgrounds, and this is my daily commitment as a peacebuilder, and I owe much of my inspiration to GLPI.” A development worker from Kenya who attended GLPI in 2019 observed: “I am better in providing advice or support to my organization to produce better actions and exercise more positive attitudes in implementing our food security projects and in achieving more useful impacts.”

MCC service worker Melody Musser talks with Aloys Ningabira, a monitoring and evaluation officer with MiPAREC in Gitaga, Burundi. He oversees the local peace committees for MiPAREC and is a graduate of the Great Lakes Peacebuilding Institute. (MCC Photo/Matthew Lester)

The ongoing work of its alumni inspires GLPI to advance its programs in order to reach more peacebuilding and development practitioners. The growth of GLPI has been sustained by the growing dedication of its founding partners, the active leadership of its board and general assembly and the continued support of MCC, both financially and through its placement of MCC staff who assist in GLPI’s organizational development. GLPI is now registering as an independent entity after being hosted by MIPAREC since its founding, bolstering its online and social media presence and actively seeking expanded collaboration with regional and national partners. For example, GLPI is now engaging other MCC-supported peace institutes like the Africa Peacebuilding Institute (API) in South Africa and the Peace and Training Center (PTC) in Jos, Nigeria, to identify synergies in the common task of advancing peace education in Africa.

What started as an month-long institute built along the SPI model, GLPI—thanks to local vision and leadership and MCC support—is now expanding into a year-round training institute serving a wider region with participants coming from organizations beyond MCC and its partners, fostering a network of change agents committed to sustainable peace and development in Africa.

Christine Sumog-oy is MCC Burundi peacebuilding coordinator. She has coordinated GLPI since 2017.

---

Learn more

Canadian School of Peacebuilding at Canadian Mennonite University. https://csop.cmu.ca/.

Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University. https://emu.edu/cjp/.

Center for Peacemaking at Fresno Pacific University. https://www.fresno.edu/visitors/center-peacemaking.

Great Lakes Initiative. https://www.gliinstitute.org/.

Mindanao Peacebuilding Institute. https://www.mpiasia.net/.

Northeast Asia Peacebuilding Institute. https://www.facebook.com/narpipeace/.

Peace and Conflict Studies at Conrad Grebel University College. https://uwaterloo.ca/master-peace-conflict-studies/.

Theology and Peace Studies at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. https://www.ambs.edu/academics/ma-peace-studies.

Training peacebuilding leaders: challenges faced and lessons learned

Individual articles from the Summer 2020 issue of Intersections will be posted on this blog twice per week. The full issue can be found on MCC’s website. This article consist of five reflections which will be posted separately.

As peacebuilding has grown and flourished as an academic field and a practical discipline over the past several decades, MCC has collaborated with Mennonite and Mennonite Brethren colleges, universities and seminaries in the United States and Canada in equipping church and community leaders from around the world with peacebuilding skills and knowledge. Through Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Canadian Mennonite University, Conrad Grebel University College, Eastern Mennonite University and Fresno Pacific University, MCC has sponsored hundreds of students for short-term peacebuilding training as well as academic degrees in peacebuilding over the past three decades (with a significant majority of those trainees studying at Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding and its predecessors). During the past quarter century, MCC has also worked closely with groups of committed peacebuilders who sought to organize contextualized peacebuilding training opportunities in their parts of the world. Over the following pages, peacebuilders in African and Asian contexts reflect on the challenges they have faced, the successes they have enjoyed and the lessons they have learned from organizing peacebuilding trainings in their regional contexts.—The editors.

Great Lakes Initiative (GLI)

The Great Lakes Initiative (GLI) is a Christian organization seeking the well-being of all citizens of the Great Lakes region of Africa in their pursuit of peace, reconciliation, justice and mercy. Its mission is to mobilize restless Christian leaders, create space for their transformation and empower them to participate in God’s mission of reconciliation in their own communities, organizations and countries. GLI works hand-in-hand with Christian leaders to foster a biblical understanding of reconciliation as God’s mission and the heart of every believer’s calling to be part of God’s work in the world.

Reflecting together with such a diverse group of Christians provides the opportunity to participate in the kind of reconciliation Paul talks about where those who were once divided are brought together as one in Christ Jesus, providing an actual experience of the New Creation.

The key event organized by GLI is an annual week-long institute. The backbone of the institute involves reflection on a series of five questions over five days:

Day 1) New Creation:  Reconciliation towards what? 
Day 2) Lament: What is going on? What is happening in our region?
Day 3) Pilgrimage & Hope: Where do we see signs of hope?
Day 4) What kind of leadership?
Day 5) Why me, why bother? Spirituality for the long haul.

Each morning begins with a session that focuses on the scriptural and theological basis for answering these questions. The next session features testimony from a “witness,” someone who lives out these questions on the ground and shares their personal story. These two sessions together (theological and contextual) capture GLI’s incarnational (word made flesh) methodology. Each of these sessions is followed by time for participants to ask questions and share comments, giving space for dialogue and reflection. In the afternoon, everyone participates in a seminar, in which a smaller group focuses on a specific peacebuilding topic. During the week, participants from the same country meet twice to discuss their country context and what they will focus on in their GLI country chapters after the institute is over.

This space for reflection is made more powerful by the fact that GLI brings together a diverse group of Christian leaders. GLI participants come from more than eight different countries, both francophone and anglophone, speaking numerous African languages. They represent dozens of Protestant denominations and the Catholic church. Some participants are ordained, while others serve as lay leaders in the church. Women and men engaged in a wide variety of Christian ministries take part. Reflecting together with such a diverse group of Christians provides the opportunity to participate in the kind of reconciliation Paul talks about where those who were once divided are brought together as one in Christ Jesus, providing an actual experience of the New Creation.

Instead of delivering participants fixed formulas and established projects, GLI provides comprehensive reflection on what it means to be a believer in a conflict-torn world.

The week also makes it possible for these diverse Christian leaders to network, learn from one another and pray and worship together. Participants work in demanding ministries in challenging contexts where it is easy to experience discouragement and burnout. Creating a space to reflect together on God’s mission of reconciliation empowers these Christian leaders to return to their ministries encouraged, refreshed and inspired.

The first seeds of GLI were planted when forty Christian leaders from the region met in Kampala, Uganda, in 2006. From that humble beginning, more gatherings were organized in Uganda (2007 and 2008) and Burundi (2009 and 2010) and the first annual institute was held in Kampala in 2011, where it has been located ever since. In 2013, a transition team formed to firmly root GLI in the region, leading to GLI’s registration in Uganda in 2015. During these years of growth, GLI benefited from the support of its founding partners, including MCC, ALARM, World Vision and the Center for Reconciliation of Duke Divinity School.

As a founding partner, with two seats on the GLI board, MCC remains instrumental in helping GLI carry out its mission. In addition to providing financial support for the organization, MCC has also sponsored many participants to attend GLI’s gatherings. MCC has helped identify thoughtful, committed and engaged Christian leaders who contribute to GLI’s mission to be a venue for mutual learning about what reconciliation looks like in the Africa’s Great Lakes region. From its beginning, GLI committed to build a movement of restless peacebuilders and thus avoid the demands of a founding a new organization. By strategically focusing on leaders who were already operating within organizations, GLI was able to make an impact without having its own organizational structure. Since GLI registered as an organization in 2015 and now has three staff members, it has increased its capacity to deepen its work in the region. However, this does not mean that GLI has given up on the movement aspect of its origins. Instead of delivering participants fixed formulas and established projects, GLI provides comprehensive reflection on what it means to be a believer in a conflict-torn world. We are grateful for the role GLI has played in building an ever-growing network of empowered reconcilers.

Peace club members clean the Ntinda police barracks to raise awareness about the club and promote peace. The peace club is a project of Africa Leadership and Reconciliation Ministries (ALARM), which hosts peace trainings for police officers and boda-boda (motorcycle taxi) drivers to promote peace in Kampala, Uganda. (Photo courtesy of ALARM)

Acher Niyonizigiye is the Executive Director of GLI.

---

Learn more

Canadian School of Peacebuilding at Canadian Mennonite University. https://csop.cmu.ca/.

Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University. https://emu.edu/cjp/.

Center for Peacemaking at Fresno Pacific University. https://www.fresno.edu/visitors/center-peacemaking.

Great Lakes Initiative. https://www.gliinstitute.org/.

Mindanao Peacebuilding Institute. https://www.mpiasia.net/.

Northeast Asia Peacebuilding Institute. https://www.facebook.com/narpipeace/.

Peace and Conflict Studies at Conrad Grebel University College. https://uwaterloo.ca/master-peace-conflict-studies/.

Theology and Peace Studies at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. https://www.ambs.edu/academics/ma-peace-studies.