Organizers, including CJP founding director John PaulĚýLederach, sociology professor Vernon Jantzi, and ±áľ±łú°ěľ±˛ą˛őĚýAssefa, a mediator in conflicts around the world, invited friends and colleagues to talk and think about the cutting edges of practice and theory in international peace work. Some uncertainty surrounded the launch of CJP itself, Jantzi recalls, and the organizers of the Frontiers conference didn’t have any particular plans to make it an annual event.

And they surely didn’t imagine that 20 years later it would be thriving, would have brought 2,800 people from 121 countries to EMU’s campus and would have directly inspired the creation of at least 10 other short-term peacebuilding institutes in Africa, Asia, the South Pacific and North America. Nor could Lederach, Jantzi and Assefa have imagined that they would remain involved to varying degrees ever since, though Assefa is the only one has taught every year at the summer institute.

“There was so much energy generated,” Jantzi recalls, of the first conference. “People were so eager to share their experiences.”

Participants found that simply being together at a week-long peacebuilding conference was tremendously beneficial and inspiring for their work, and the response was enthusiastic. During the following academic year, CJP received its accreditation, had three students in the master’s program and admitted a dozen more to begin in the fall of 1995, and had hired its first full-time administrative staff member, Ruth Zimmerman. Things were heading in a good direction, and CJP organized a second Frontiers in International Peacebuilding conference in the summer of 1995.

Conference becomes “SPI”

For its third year, CJP gave its one-week peacebuilding conference a new name: the Summer Peacebuilding Institute, or SPI. Word was spreading, interest was growing, and SPI was about to begin growing quickly in size, scope and length. By 2002, SPI attracted around 150 participants from about 50 countries and offered 20 classes over a two-month period.

One of the major early emphases at SPI – and CJP more generally – was grounding the academic curriculum and classroom instruction in practical, on-the-ground application of peacebuilding and conflict resolution. Early in SPI’s history, outside funders helped bring participants from different sides of several major conflicts around the world, including groups of Catholics and Protestants from Northern Ireland and members of the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups from Rwanda and Burundi.

This created a rich and challenging environment at SPI, adding a heavy dose of real-life experience from difficult, violent conflicts – sometimes involving opposing sides of the same conflict – to complement the theory-based aspects of the curriculum.

“In the classroom, that was pretty powerful,” says Tim Ruebke, who attended four years of SPI before earning his master’s degree from CJP in 1999.

Rich experiences outside classroom

Many report that the most powerful moments at SPI, though, occurred during informal, social times away from the classroom. Ruebke recalls an evening gathering at a home in Harrisonburg where participants from Northern Ireland shared stories, songs and dancing with each other and the rest of their classmates.

While the daily sessions focus on the cerebral, “head” aspects of peacebuilding, these informal, social times in the evenings get at its emotional “heart.” This aspect of SPI, Ruebke says, mirrors the reality of many real-life peace negotiations, where the hard work of compromise, connection and understanding between parties often occurs in relaxed, social settings before being finalized at the formal negotiating table.

“A lot of stuff that happens here is informal and relational,” says Jantzi. “We think it’s very significant.”

And as SPI participants often discover, the emotional aspects of peacebuilding aren’t always happy times of singing and dancing. One of the early SPI sessions included visitors from the former Soviet republic of Georgia as well as Abkhazia, a disputed region within Georgia over which a civil war was fought in the 1990s. One evening, an SPI professor had planned a discussion about this conflict and began by displaying a map of the region.

Ruebke was in the audience, and remembers that one of the parties was upset in some way by what was (or perhaps, what wasn’t) portrayed on the map. This immediately and badly derailed the session, and by the time things had been patched up and discussion about the conflict was able to proceed, the importance of the “felt” aspect of peacebuilding had been brought home to Ruebke in a memorable way.

“Even though we were a peacebuilding program, people brought their stuff with them,” remembers Ruth Zimmerman, who says that these sorts of conflicts would periodically flare up between participants. “We had a great learning ground for using some of those [conflict resolution] skill sets over the years.”

At the very beginning, the Frontiers in International Peacebuilding conferences and SPI were simply opportunities for professional development and learning. Before long, however, participants and graduate students in CJP began lobbying for an academic credit component to SPI. Though hesitant to accept the constraints of a pre-planned curriculum, CJP added a credit component to provide students with more flexibility in earning degrees through the program.

Some core courses have been offered year after year, including ones dealing with conflict analysis, restorative justice and trauma healing, and others that focus on practical peacebuilding skills like negotiation and reconciliation. Yet SPI stays true to its roots by exploring the field’s frontiers and updating its course offerings to reflect emerging themes in peacebuilding. Examples of new courses in 2014 include ones on media and societal transformation, playback theater, trauma-sensitive peacebuilding, mindfulness, and architecture as a peacebuilding tool.

Things ran on the skinniest of shoestring budgets in the very first years of SPI, when CJP professors opened their homes to participants after the day’s sessions had ended, while their spouses pitched in to help with meals. Volunteers filled many support roles. This contributed to the organic, intimate atmosphere that remains an important aspect of SPI to this day. But it was an exhausting and, in the long run, unsustainable way to run the event that itself led to conflicts between overworked staff members.

“It was so much work,” recalls Zimmerman, who filled leadership roles at CJP from 1995 to 2007. “I used to put in 70-hour weeks.”

Huge logistics behind SPI

In addition to planning courses and lining up faculty to teach them, coordinating the many moving parts of the growing SPI program presented huge logistical challenges. Once, a participant booked a flight to the Dallas, Texas, airport rather than Washington, D.C.’s Dulles Airport. Another one hopped in a taxi and directed the driver to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 185 miles north of Harrisonburg, Virginia.

In 1998, just after she became one of CJP’s earliest master’s program graduates, Pat Hostetter Martin (also a participant in the very first Frontiers in International Peacemaking conference) joined SPI to help relieve the growing crisis of stress and exhaustion the workload was placing on other staff. The following year, Martin became SPI’s co-director with Patricia Spaulding, and then sole director from 2004 until 2008.

In 2000, William Goldberg – a 2001 master’s program graduate of CJP – joined the SPI staff as the transportation coordinator. He later served as an associate director, co-director and, as of 2013, the director of SPI, which now has two full-time staff members and employs about 10 temporary staff each summer. (Other SPI leaders: Gloria Rhodes in the ’90s, Sue Williams, 2008-’11; Valerie Helbert, 2011-’13.)

As the first Jewish program administrator at EMU, Goldberg embodies one of the ways that SPI has affected EMU as a whole by bringing such wide cultural and religious diversity to campus. From the very first Frontiers in International Peacebuilding conferences, CJP leaders wanted faculty to reflect the religious and cultural diversity of the participants – a desire at odds with EMU’s requirement that all faculty profess a Christian faith. After some discussion, CJP was able to negotiate exceptions to EMU’s hiring practices and hire non-Christian faculty members during the summer, which Jantzi points to as an example of the strong support SPI has generally enjoyed from university administrators since its beginning.

EMU’s hospitable community

Support from the university extended well beyond the administration, remembers Jantzi. Cafeteria staff embraced the opportunity, rather than resented the hassle, of serving participants with a variety of religious and cultural dietary preferences, while the physical plant staff went to great lengths to ensure everyone stayed comfortable during their time on campus. Together, the welcoming atmosphere the entire university created at SPI for visitors from around the world became an important part of its success.

As employees and departments outside of SPI pitched in to help it succeed, SPI also tried to build closer ties to the broader university community by making events like the opening ceremonies and the periodic SPI luncheons open to anyone on campus and in the surrounding community. And when these general open invitations didn’t attract large audiences, Martin found greater success when she started targeting specific people and departments with invitations and paying for their lunches.

SPI staff have also made similar efforts to share the diversity present on campus each summer with the broader community in and around Harrisonburg. As SPI’s community relations coordinator for about a decade, Margaret Foth worked to connect participants with families, churches and civic groups in the area. She helped form a particularly strong relationship with the Rotary Club of Rockingham County, which hosts a speaker from SPI each year and has helped underwrite an SPI trip to Washington D.C. A close relationship also developed between SPI and Park View Mennonite Church, just down the road from EMU, which has welcomed numerous international visitors in Sunday School classes and as participants in worship services.

“We wanted [participants] to know that it was an area that was welcoming and hospitable,” says Foth. “They weren’t just coming for an academic session. They were coming for relationships in a welcoming community.”

From 2000 to 2010, vanloads of SPI participants made connections farther from campus when they attended a peacebuilding conference held each summer by a group of churches in Knoxville, Tennessee, 360 miles southwest of Harrisonburg. (The minister who organized this conference, Jim Foster, is a graduate of Eastern Mennonite Seminary.) By staying with host families, the visitors enjoyed a more immersive experience in American culture; Foth says she could always count on enthusiastic reviews the following Monday, after participants returned to campus.

One year, a Vietnamese-American lawyer from California made the 12-hour round trip to Knoxville, and ended up staying in the home of a Mennonite pastor who, decades earlier, had fought in the Vietnam War. After they stayed up one night talking about their experience of that conflict, the lawyer returned to SPI and told Foth it had been a moment of great healing.

“I can still see him running across campus to give me a hug and say it was the best thing to have happened to him,” she recalls.

Ěý

Akin to heaven on earth?

In 2014, a total of 184 people from 36 countries attended SPI – about the size that SPI has been for the past five years, Goldberg says. As its third decade begins, SPI is as strong and as thriving as ever – planning for 2015 began before the books had even been closed on this year’s session.

Those who have been involved with SPI in some way over the past 20 years treasure the many memories and friendships they’ve formed along the way.

“I think it’s one of the best things that’s happened for EMU,” says Jantzi. “It’s one of the most exciting things I’ve been involved with here …. It’s just a really, really energizing time.”

One year, Jantzi and an Iranian seminary student who came to SPI struck up an intriguing, weeks-long conversation about whether converting other people to their respective religions could be done in a nonviolent, non-coercive way. This man later became a high-ranking diplomat who, years later, returned to the United States as part of an Iranian delegation to the United Nations. He contacted Jantzi and invited himself back to Harrisonburg to give a guest lecture in one of Jantzi’s sociology classes – an encouraging indication, Jantzi says, of the high regard this former SPI participant still had for EMU.

Goldberg says he’s often inspired by the great lengths that people will go to so they can attend SPI. In 2014, a group of Syrian participants traveled at least 12 hours each way, through difficult and unsafe conditions, to Lebanon to get their visas to travel to the United States. Then they did it again to catch their flights – an illustration, he says, of “the need that people have for this training.”

And he’s similarly inspired by the eagerness with which people return to very difficult circumstances in their homes to put that training and learning into practice.

“No matter how difficult the conflict someone comes from, they want to go back and make it better with the new skills they’ve learned here,” Goldberg says.

More generally, Martin, as well as others interviewed for this story, says one of the most important enduring memories of SPI is “the rich diversity of the whole thing. Oftentimes, that came out so well in the opening ceremonies. That just humbled you.

“You want heaven to be like this,” she says.

— Andrew Jenner

Goldberg and Helbert are veteran employees of the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, under which SPI operates. Goldberg has been employed in various capacities by CJP since 1999, Helbert moved into an administrative role with SPI in 2005 after working in other staff positions at EMU for five years.

These co-directors are replacing Sue Williams, who is retiring from a staff role to return to consulting internationally, after directing SPI for the last three years.

Upon appointing the two new leaders, CJP executive director Lynn Roth said: “Their combination of skills and experience will ensure that SPI will not skip a beat in being one of the premier Summer Peacebuilding programs in the world. Their creativity and network connections should help SPI and CJP continue to develop new and innovative training initiatives.”

Since the institute’s 1994 founding, over 2,500 international workers in humanitarian, conflict transformation and other peacebuilding endeavors have taken part. During four week-long sessions – this year, until June 18 – they investigate many aspects of peace and conflict while forming cross-cultural friendships and working partnerships.

Halbert and Goldberg will lead the SPI program for the 2011-12 academic year, a time of review for SPI as the program has grown and EMU looks towards its long term future.

Faisa Loyaan’s contribution: “learning and sharing.”

That Somalian guest’s response seemed typical among the 80 learners arriving from 23 nations for the annual gathering organized by EMU’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. From May 9 – June 17, workers in conflict resolution and humanitarian fields will be forming cross-cultural friendships and partnerships while studying aspects of and learning practical skills for reducing Ěýconflict.

Many each year arrive from the planet’s most troubled spots, where pain, fear and anger might be anticipated baggage.

Yet in the opening exercise, students from Nigeria and Sierra Leone said they brought “happiness”; a man from Haiti, “friendship”; a learner from Iran, “love, peace and justice”; a Liberian guest, “excitement.”

“Hope” was a component of many responses hung from a clothesline and spoken to all assembled. “Cheer” was the reply by Rowan Mundhenk, a program coordinator for the past year and a half with Mennonite Central Committee in Cairo.

Mundhenk, an American, is taking one of three new courses offered at SPI – Ěý“Arts and Media-Based Peacebuilding” – to gain understanding of the social media credited with sparking Egypt’s nonviolent revolution. Although deposed dictator Mubarak briefly shut down Internet and mobile access, Mundhenk says, “From what I heard, it was too late.” Activists, already informed through Facebook and Twitter, had taken to the streets.

Now, Mundhenk added, “No one knows what will happen.” Meanwhile, MCC is “working with local partners to build peaceful relations and help with trauma healing.”

Faisa Loyaan, who works on conflict transformation with non-governmental organizations in eastern Africa, is taking the “Practice” course in peacebuilding skills because “I want to learn some of the tools.”

Although civil war, famine and piracy may be all many Americans hear of her native country, Loyaan, who now lives in Kenya, insists, “It’s a very distorted story, what you see on the news. There are a lot of good things happening in Somalia.”

CJP professor Howard Zehr – who teaches and has pioneered restorative justice – says peacebuilders can get too serious. He promised to bring “a sense of humor.”

Lilian Burlando, from Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, announced delightedly, “I brought part of my family.”

Burlando’s three traveling companions include daughter Karina Echazu, a prosecutor who found her earlier SPI study of restorative justice meaningful. She calls the concept, not widely accepted in either American or Argentine courts, “a change that has to be done little by little.” Echazu noted restorative principles can be applied in more traditional criminal-justice settings. She cited a recent pre-sentencing hearing when a child-abuser expressed remorse – which her office in turn reported to the victim’s family.

Burlando operates a center for counseling and interfaith dialogue. Attending her fourth SPI, she also brought a high-school student granddaughter, and grandson Joaco Echazu. He’s studying “Conflict- Sensitive Development,” which he hopes to apply in public-security management as well as mission work.

About half of SPI learners come from North America; the rest from around the world, according to director Sue Williams. Enrollment is down this year, though more arrivals are expected. Williams advised anyone encountering cultural or language misunderstandings to recall their own embarrassing errors, like requesting “a fried umbrella to eat.”

CJP graduate students Francis Miller and Daryl Snider led a group rhythm-making exercise. Waves of sound moved across the auditorium, produced by rubbing hands together, slapping thighs and snapping fingers.

Classes began shortly after voices from 23 nations sang, “The Peace of the Earth Be With You.”

– Chris Edwards is a free-lance writer living in Harrisonburg.

Dr. Anil Solanki of Eastern Mennonite Seminary noted that the peace pole phrase is translated “Let Peace Prevail in the Universe” in his native Hindi language. SPI director Sue Williams is at right. Photo by Lindsey Kolb

The 10-foot-high handcrafted pole with six flat sides proclaims the prayer, “May Peace Prevail on Earth,” in 18 language panels. Students in EMU’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI) and several faculty-staff persons read the words in the language of their respective countries before the panels were attached to the pole.

Languages displayed on the pole are Swahili, Chinese, Arabic, Spanish, English, Hebrew, Korean, Navajo, French, Russian, Japanese, Indonesian, Hindi, Urdu, Amharic, Sesotho, Filipino and German.

A community effort

Summer Peacebuilding Institute participant Vera Giantari from Indonesia reads “Let Peace Prevail on Earth” in her language before the panel is attached to the peace pole. Photo by Lindsey Kolb

The pole was erected in a specially-prepared space on the edge of Thomas Plaza in front of the EMU Campus Center.

David Moyer from Mount Solon, Va., a member of Valley Friends Meeting and 2010 graduate of Eastern Mennonite Seminary, donated the milled locust post for the project. The wood was harvested from his personal property.

The idea to erect a peace pole at EMU originated with Sushil Koirala, a participant in an earlier SPI program from Nepal.

Visual reminder of need for peace

“Installing a peace pole on campus provides a visual reminder of the centrality of working toward peace in the mission of the university,” said EMU campus pastor Brian Martin Burkholder, whose campus ministries department coordinated the project.

“A call to peace and peacebuilding are basic to the EMU mission statement, and the language panels on the pole represent the rich cultural diversity of our campus community and broader learning partnerships,” he added.

‘Peacebuilders wherever we are’

EMU President Loren Swartzendruber led a dedicatory prayer, noting that the peace pole will provide “a good reminder as we walk across campus and move out into the world to be peacebuilders wherever we are.”

Sue Williams, SPI director, led a Celtic blessing on attendees, reminding everyone that genuine peacebuilding includes establishing right relationships among people and with the earth.”

The ceremony opened with the singing of “Let There Be Peace on Earth” and concluded with “This is my song (oh God of all the nations),” sung to the tune of “Finlandia.”

Funding partnership

Funding for the project came from partner clubs, organizations and EMU departments including:

• Young People’s Christian Association (YPCA)
• Peace Fellowship
• Eastern Mennonite Seminary
• Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP)
• Bible and religion
• Cross-cultural program
• EMU core curriculum
• peacebuilding and development
• Abraham’s Tent
• International Student Services
• Multicultural Services
• Intensive English Program (IEP)

That morning, as a conga line danced, singing, into the crowded Martin chapel on the Harrisonburg, Va., campus, volcanic ash storm-related travel delays kept one participant behind in Italy. Lack of funds and/or visas barred others. Yet attendance had jumped back significantly from the recession- and epidemic-driven drop, to 84, a year ago.

Now, those assembled laughed as SPI Director Sue Williams noted, “We have only seven days of class, and we will try to fit too much into them.”

Thousands of alumni worldwide

Since the institute’s 1994 founding, about 2,500 international workers in humanitarian, conflict transformation and other peacebuilding endeavors have taken part. During four week-long sessions – this year, until June 18 – they investigate many aspects of peace and conflict while forming cross-cultural friendships and working partnerships.

Vera Giantari from Indonesia introduces herself during the opening SPI gathering. Photo by Lindsey Kolb

Williams expects enrollment to total more than 200 over all sessions. She adds, “One new thing this year was a one-week intensive English class, before SPI began, for those who wanted to spend some time getting comfortable speaking English.”

“We are people of many colors, and we represent so many ministries and activities around the world,” said EMU President Loren Swartzendruber. Learners’ home countries, ranging from Afghanistan to Zambia, include Haiti, Israel and Palestine as well as the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

Building networks

Valerie Helbert, a staff member with EMU’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding – which sponsors SPI – encouraged learners to “educate others” if misunderstandings arise. “Assume that they mean well,” she suggested.

Richard Higginson from Northern Ireland introduces himself during the opening SPI gathering while fellow participants post “footprints” with their names on their home countries on a world map. Photo by Lindsey Kolb

Participant introductions were accompanied by the beat of CJP student Mashuri’s djembe drum. Another CJP student, Richard Higginson, strummed a guitar for a sing-along of his “Colors Song”:

“We are many colors . . .a portrait of perfection.”

CJP master’s student Abdinasir Nur, attending his first SPI, says, “In CJP we talk about social capital.” He hopes that in SPI, “We’ll be making a lot of social capital: networks.”

He wants to be a peacebuilder in his country, Somalia. “I like to work with communities,” he says, and may do so either in professional work with an NGO or as a volunteer. He’s taking the course, “Conflict-Sensitive Development and Peacebuilding,”

Clan rivalries and religious discord – even among people of the same faith – drive conflict in Somalia, Nur explains. “I want to see a world where people live together in peace and harmony without any form of conflict. This is a naive hope, but we can at least try.”

Memphis team works with youth

Although this is the first trip to SPI for Vickie O’Neal, her husband, Michael, and their colleagues with the Memphis, Tenn., conflict-resolution team, Turning Point Partners, attended in 2009.

O’Neal, a Turning Point coordinator, is happy that after years of volunteering in Memphis schools, the team has been hired to do similar work. Members lead empathy-training and “peace-making circles,” working with children involved in juvenile courts.

Having enrolled in the courses, “Introduction to Conflict Resolution” and “Restorative Justice,” O’Neal says, “Violence is not only physical. I’m sure I’m going to find that conflict is on many levels.”

The opening ceremony featured two Irish blessings. An American CJP student with Irish ancestry led the recital of one in a brogue. Williams shared another: “If God sends you down a stony path, may he give you strong shoes.”

Learn more about conflict resolution at EMU

• Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP)
• Graduate Program in Conflict Transformation
• Summer Peace Institute (SPI)
• Strategies for Trauma Awareness & Resilience (STAR)
• CJP Faculty and Staff

Chris Edwards is a free-lance writer from Harrisonburg, Va. Contact EMU’s marketing and communications office for more information on this article.

By Jeremy Hunt, Daily News-Record

Folks representing cultures from all over the world dance Monday at an event marking the end of the first of four sessions of a peacebuilding program at ˛ÝÝ®ÉçÇř. Photo by Jeremy Hunt

Fiji is a beautiful country with picturesque beaches and stunning landscape.

But the Pacific Island nation struggles with inner turmoil and unrest.

A 2006 coup ousted the ethnic Fijian-dominated government and replaced it with a military government. It’s come under international criticism recently, with neighboring countries saying the government rejects democracy, freedom and human rights.

Koila Costello-Olsson finds herself in the middle of all this. In fact, it’s her job.

"A lot of it is old and deep-rooted and it’s transferred over the years," she said.

Costello-Olsson is the director of Pacific Peacebuilding, a nongovernmental agency in Fiji that aims to facilitate dialogue among opposing groups and train conflict resolution.

The most recent coup was one of several that have contributed to Fiji’s instability.

Among the issues that cause conflict are poorly managed resources and discriminatory policies, Costello-Olsson said.

To assist in her work, she studied at ˛ÝÝ®ÉçÇř’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute in Harrisonburg. She graduated the program with a master’s in 2005.

This year, she is teaching a course in the program, which is run through EMU’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.

"For me, this is my support group," she said. "They have supported myself and my community tremendously."

The summer institute consists of four sessions that run over six weeks. The first session ended Monday, and the institute celebrated with food, music, dancing and a "cultural fashion show."

The summer institute brings together more than 200 participants from throughout the United States and more than 30 nations, including Bolivia, Afghanistan, Israel, China and Kenya, said Sue Williams, the institute’s director. Read more about these peacebuilders from 35 nations gathered to study healing and peace.

Some of the participants are earning course credit, Williams said, but more than half work for nongovernmental agencies for peacebuilding and conflict resolution.

The participants share ideas and discuss programs that have been successful in their countries, Williams said.

"The main focus of this institute is people who do this work," she said. "In my experience … nothing is directly exportable, but the ideas can be adapted."

They turned to greet neighbors, each invited to speak in his or her native language. Many said “Hello”; a few, “Hola!” or “Bonjour.” Sebastian Bukenya, a young Roman Catholic priest from Uganda, asked, “Oli otya!” (in the Luganda language, “How are you?”).

The mood among these 84 visitors from 35 nations seemed undampened either by chilly, wet weather or slightly reduced attendance as the 14th annual Summer Peacebuilding Institute opened May 4 at ˛ÝÝ®ÉçÇř.

Samuel Waihenya Njoroge from Kenya introduces himself in the opening session of the 2009 Summer Peacebuilding Institute. The first SPI session, May 4-12, drew 84 people from 35 countries.

“As I look at your faces and listen to your voices, I feel the presence of the whole world here,” SPI’s new executive director Sue Williams told the gathering in Martin Chapel.

Learners at SPI – a program operated by EMU’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding – work in humanitarian, conflict resolution and other peace-related areas in their home countries. Ninety-six had been expected for the opening session, but attendance has been deterred by visa restrictions combined with the global economic downturn and swine flu outbreak, Williams said.

Students combine faith and social issues with trauma healing

Bukenya, attending for the first time, had learned of SPI through his service on a peacebuilding team in Kampala. His parishioners, having endured prolonged hardships in their country’s 23-year-long civil war, face challenges that he characterized in part as “trauma healing and forgiveness.” Hoping to gain theoretical knowledge to strengthen skills he has been acquiring by practice, Bukenya has enrolled in two classes: “Faith-Based Peacebuilding” and “Philosophy and Praxis of Forgiveness and Reconciliation.”

“I’m fighting for the rights of women in Pakistan,” said Razia Joseph, president of the Women Shelter Organization in Faisalabad, a city in her nation’s Punjab region. Her organization promotes women’s education and health care, assists women in prison and provides shelter for victims of domestic violence. In contacts with fellow-peacebuilders in SPI, she hopes to call attention to the plight of the women in her country.

SPI global network now in the thousands

More than 2,200 alumni from all parts of the world have attended SPI. During four sessions spread over six weeks, SPI learners form cross-cultural friendships and working partnerships while studying many aspects of solving conflict.

New courses and instructors this year include “Faith-Based Peacebuilding,” offered by Roy Hange, co-pastor of Charlottesville Mennonite Church and Harrisonburg District overseer for the Virginia Mennonite Conference; and “Human Rights, Governance, and Peacebuilding,” taught by Dan Wessner, EMU professor of international and political studies. SPI training sessions will include mediation and facilitating crime victim/offender dialogue.

(L. to r.): Mary Beth Spinelli, Krista Johnson and Pam Welsh, students in the MA in conflict transformation program and SPI participants, place symbols representing various cultural and faith traditions at the Summer Peacebuilding Institute on a table during a welcoming gathering.

“The ideal global learning experience would be for each of us to spend a year working alongside every person here,” said Williams. Although that is not possible, she noted, “We have SPI.” Williams replaced former SPI director Pat Hostetter Martin following her retirement last year.

Williams’ work includes healing in Northern Ireland

Before arriving on campus in Fall 2008, Williams had lived and worked in Northern Ireland, Uganda, Kenya and Botswana, and had served as a consultant on political mediation and dialogue in a training program for the Mediation Support Unit of the United Nation’s Department of Political Affairs.

Read more about William’s work in Ireland in the spring/summer issue of Peacebuilder. The magazine also details the work of other CJP professors and EMU community members long involved in the peace process there.

“We are here to be learners and teachers. We are not here to have a vacation,” Williams noted. However, shared meals, sports, music and local sightseeing enrich the cultural learning.

The opening ceremony by CJP students featured symbols of diversity – small flags from many lands, colorful fabrics and religious symbols. A round loaf of bread served to symbolize unity. “If you are not familiar with the term, ‘potluck,’ you will be during your time at SPI,” an announcer promised. Read more about the opening ceremony and Koila Costello-Olsson from Fiji…

Masters in conflict transformation at CJP

Some SPI participants earn credit toward a masters’ from the CJP program, which has awarded degrees to about 300 graduates now working in more than 50 nations, said CJP executive director Lynn Roth.

A standby in SPI opening ceremonies is the introduction of each guest by home country. Nations represented this year included Jordan, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Pakistan, Lebanon, Kenya, Palestine, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Sri Lanka, the Ukraine, the UK, Afghanistan, Northern Ireland, Denmark, Canada and Honduras.

Following prayers from several languages and faith traditions, the class work began.

The SPI program, with six intensive classes in each of the four sessions, will run through June 12.

Chris Edwards is a free-lance writer living in Harrisonburg.

EMU has named a new director of the Summer Peacebuilding Institute, which is part of the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP).

Lynn Roth, CJP executive director, announced that Sue Williams will succeed Pat Hostetter Martin, who is retiring after giving 10 years of leadership to the program. The Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI) draws upwards to 200 persons from more than 50 countries to campus every year during May and June for intensive courses taught by CJP faculty and guest instructors in areas of peacebuilding, trauma healing and restorative justice. More than 2,200 participants have attended SPI since the program began in 1996.

"Sue brings 25 years of experience to the SPI and to the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding," said Lynn Roth, CJP executive director. "We’re pleased to have Sue join us to lead the SPI program to the next stage of development and leadership in peacebuilding training around the world."

Since 2000, Ms. Williams has worked as an independent consultant, assisting and training in conflict analysis, management, prevention of escalation of violence, program design, strategic reviews and evaluation of projects in countries including Rwanda, Northern Ireland, Cambodia, Guatemala, Sri Lanka, Kenya and Myanmar.

Since 2005, she has also served as special consultant to Folke Bernadotte Academy in Stockholm, Sweden, providing training for the new Mediation Support Unit of the UN Department of Political Affairs.

From 1998 to 2000 Williams directed the Policy and Evaluation Unit of INCORE at the University of Ulster/United Nations University where she helped in the development of "best practice" and evaluation approaches for conflict resolution as a field.

From 1994 to 1998 she worked with Responding to Conflict, where she served as director for Policy and Process Skills and course organizer and tutor.

From 1984 to 1994 she worked for Quaker Peace and Service (British and Irish Quakers). Williams and her late husband, Steve, were representatives in East Africa and in Northern Ireland. They provided support for a variety of reconciliation and peace initiatives, including political mediation and dialog, and lived in Northern Ireland for nearly 20 years.

Williams’s publications include joint authorship of "Working with Conflict: Skills and Strategies for Action" (Zed Books, London, 2000) and "Being in the Middle by Being at the Edge: Quaker Experience of Non-Official Political Mediation" (York, Sessions, 1994).

She holds BA and MA degrees in French and politics from Brown University.

"I am especially interested in helping SPI to explore its vision and role with colleagues in a rapidly-changing world of conflict and conflict transformation and supporting practitioners to strengthen and systematize their work and to draw, test and share hypotheses from it," Williams said in applying for the position.