On Monday, 17 October 2016 Cross Cultures hosted our FREEDOMS a lively interactive town hall with Dimitri Lascaris, Rehab Nazzal, Wendy Goldsmith, introduced by Gehan Sabry. This audio recording contains only the presentations; the Questions and Answers session is not available (not all participants allowed their comments to be made available).
Local community groups are hosting Perspectives on Peace: Local Approaches to Positive Change, an evening of sharing, collaboration, and action on October 1st 2016 from 4:00pm to 8:30pm at the Queen Street Commons Café in downtown Kitchener.
This event, hosted under the umbrella of KW Peace, will emphasize positive work happening in our community and inspire action. KW Peace is a collective of local peace and social justice groups interested in collaboration and networking.
The concept of peace building is very broad, and encompasses a wide range of approaches and issues. The goal of this gathering is to celebrate our individual perspectives on peace, as well as find ways to work together in creating peace and positive change in our community. We’ll do this by showcasing the work that’s already being done and encouraging new action and collaboration.
Simon Dalby, CIGIThe agenda includes a Keynote speaker, dinner, showcasing of participating groups, and small group discussions. Keynote speaker Dr. Simon Dalby, CIGI Chair, will be speaking about the interaction between climate change and conflict, from his experience working in the fields of climate change, political ecology, geopolitics, and global security.
Participating groups include: The Nonviolence Festival, Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), Spiritual Heritage Education Network (SHEN), Divest Waterloo, Cross Cultures, Green Party, Amnesty International, Centre for Peace Advancement(CPA), FairVote, Animal Save, Vegan Society, and Stirling Avenue Mennonite Church’s Social Justice Working group.
Our next potluck dinner for KW Peace is on Wed, July 20th. We will not have access to the kitchen this time, so please bring your own dishes, cutlery, serving utensils, a way to carry your dirty dishes home afterward, and whatever else you would need.
We will be meeting in Stirling Ave Mennonite Church’s Peace and Justice room upstairs.
We will be planning our fall event at this meeting, Local Approaches to creating positive change. Brief summary:
KW Peace invites local groups and community members working for positive change in the Kitchener Waterloo Community to join us for a day of sharing, collaboration, and action.
There’s so much positive action happening in KW and we want to celebrate it by getting together and learning from each other! Come prepared to be inspired by the incredible people working our out community, and share your own work and passions to inspire others. Although our work may seem very different on the surface, all of us are working to improve life for those around us, battle injustice, and create positive change in Kitchener-Waterloo.
The event will consist of a keynote speaker, sharing by local groups about their goals and projects, and collaborative visioning for the future of our community. Lunch is provided at no cost.
Peace Camp is an initiative housed in the MSCU Center for Peace Advancement at Conrad Grebel University College. The 2016 Directing team is made up of Kaitlyn Skelly, a current University of Waterloo student going into her 4th year of Speech Communication and Peace and Conflict Studies and Rebekah DeJong, a recent University of Waterloo Alumni of Peace and Conflict Studies.
The Peace Camp Team is happy to share that we have completed another successful workshop season! The Peace Camp 2016 season resulted in 101 peace education presentations facilitated at 30 different schools across the region, reaching an estimated 3235 students. Throughout the hour long workshops Rebekah and I had the chance to work with youth in elementary schools ranging from Grade 3 to Grade 8. It was a wonderful opportunity to explore ideas of social justice and peace building with youth and to empower students to use their abilities to have a positive impact on their communities.
Our activities ranged from Peace Postcards that became random acts of kindness to team building activities that challenged participants to complete a bridge building task without verbal communication. Junior students experienced a Circle Process that explored the impact our words have on the feelings of those who hear them. Intermediate students tried their hand at conflict analysis to understand the root causes of problems and create solutions that turn conflict into a peace building opportunities. These activates highlighted the workshop participant’s peace building skills and demonstrated how each individual is capable of being peace builders in our communities.
We loved seeing students experience “aha!” moments when ideas and concepts we were discussing clicked for them, especially when talking about how we can apply peace building to our everyday lives. It was exciting to witness the creative ideas students had to solve problems, express themselves and the depth of understanding for peace and compassion they demonstrated in our sessions.
Students we worked with were enthusiastic and engaged with the topics of social justice and peace building. In our feedback from teachers we were told that,
“the students were highly receptive and reflective based upon the ideas discussed”
and that they were impressed with the level of engagement their students showed while participating in the workshop. Another teacher said that “the message is positive and important and having it come from young adults is great”. Educators were pleased with the connections their students could make with local university students, “Thank you, so impressed with the many programs coming out of the University of Waterloo”. Rebekah and I are glad to hear about the positive impact this program has had on students and are grateful to the educators who welcomed us into their classrooms.
Throughout the 2016 workshop season one of the questions students ask us most often was “Is there a real Peace Camp in the summer?”, and the answer is YES! We have a week long day camp in August for youth ages 11-14. The camp is located on the University of Waterloo Campus at Conrad Grebel University College. This summer’s theme is ‘Peace In Action’ and the goal is to show campers that whatever their interests may be, whether it is art, music, math, engineering, business or even fashion, be they can use them to pursue peace. Registration is still open and we have a few more spots available.
You can visit community group displays to learn about positive things happening in the Kitchener Waterloo community. There will also be local artists and vendors, live music by local artists, food with vegetarian friendly options, and a children’s activities area.
It’s a great way to engage with the community and spend a wonderful Saturday afternoon in the park.
The Nonviolence Festival has been celebrating diversity, peace, and social justice since 2005, making this year’s festival the 12th annual Day in the Park celebration. In a world where we struggle against violence and fear, the Nonviolence Festival focuses on positive ways we can engage with those around us, working for peace and positive relationships. They define Nonviolence as ‘treating others the way you wish to be treated’ and when that principle is applied to our relationships at home, workplace and the world, we build the kind of world in which we want to live.
The Nonviolence Festival’s Day in the Park is one of multiple events held by the group throughout the year that are guided by nonviolence principles. Visit their Facebook page to stay up to date – https://www.facebook.com/The-Non-Violence-Festival-8613247145/.
The next KW Peace potluck meeting will be June 16th 2016 from 6:00pm to 8:00pm in the Stirling Avenue Mennonite Church’s Peace and Justice room (a different room than before), 57 Stirling Avenue North Kitchener. Map Please bring a dish to share!
If you haven’t been posting your events to the KW Peace calendar, please consider checking it out! We want to advertise the KW Peace calendar to the public, so it’d be ideal to have lots of events posted. If you need help with the website, please contact Bob Jonkman – bobjonkman@kwpeace.ca
At our previous KW Peace Potluck meeting we had discussed holding a one day conference event, hosted by the members of this group and open to other group members as well as members of the public. This would be a unique opportunity to work together each other and share our work and ideas! We’re really excited about this idea, and hope that you’ll be excited too.
The focus of this event would be “Perspectives on Peacemaking,” and we invite groups to share how they are making peace in our local or global community. We define peace in the broad holistic sense, so any work that improves our community and contributes to social justice is included. The main purpose of the event would be highlighting the great work that goes on in our community, learning from each other, as well as giving people practical ways to get involved and make a difference.
Tentatively we are thinking our event would include longer presentations (30 mins to 1 hour), round table discussions, and short (2-5 min) presentations. During the longer presentations, a group or speaker might share an issue that is relevant to our community, how they address the issue, and how people can get involved. The round table discussion would have pre-selected questions that you discuss with people around you, in order to facilitate sharing of ideas and information. The short presentations would give a group an opportunity to just briefly say some kind of announcement or message they want to get out to this audience. We would also have table space available for displays or other types of publicity materials (brochures, business cards, etc)
Please let us know if you are interesting in helping with the planning and facilitating of this event, presenting a long or short presentation, or having table space for materials.
Additionally, if you are interested in participating in the KW Peace initiatives, please sign up for the KW Peace Groups mailing list.
When: Tuesday, May 17, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Where: Great Hall, Christ Church Cathedral, 414 Sparks Street, Ottawa
FREE EVENT
Join us for a dialogue on working for peace, featuring presentations by Ploughshares researchers, including: Cesar Jaramillo, Branka Marijan, Sonal Marwah and Jessica West.
Creative Commons — Attribution 4.0 International — CC BY 4.0 license.
Creative Commons — Attribution 2.0 Generic — CC BY 2.0 license.
![.PNG image, 301 kBytes, 1275×1651](/wp-content/uploads/Perspectives-on-Peace-poster-1.png"){kind=link}