Following the SPI 2015 course in Strategies for Trauma-Informed Organizations, Barry and Mikhala embarked on a process to apply the course content and learning to our own educational environment. Together, they developed the following definition to represent “our working understanding of a trauma-informed organization.”

According to their definition, a trauma-informed organization: Read more…

• has staff that has received training in trauma and that knows how to identify signs of trauma. Staff incorporates a trauma-informed framework into their interactions with clients, meaning that they understand that people have stories and deserve to be treated with compassion and respect;
• creates structures so that staff can practice meaningful self-care;
• opens space for members of the organization, institution or business to speak about stress;
• fosters a sincerely relational environment where everyone’s dignity is respected;
• provides resources for getting help for those that need it.

Participants in their 2016 can look forward to exploring their own organizations with a trauma-informed lens and deepening exposure to how various organizations are working towards integrating trauma awareness into their work.

What does this mean for SPI? SPI is a container for naturally challenging process of transformational learning about chronic violence and injustices. In an increasingly trauma-informed environment, designated listeners and instructors will be tuned in to ways to follow up to participants encountering traumatic response to material. Part of trauma-informing SPI means addressing systemic violence and injustice within which we are operating; as an institution where the vast majority of faculty and staff is white, we have a lot of work to do.

My inaugural encounter with the Mennonite-affiliated peacebuilding practitioners and scholars was during my interaction with other African peace enthusiasts at the second Africa Peacebuilding Institute (API) 13 years ago at the Mindolo Ecumenical Foundation (MEF) in Zambia. As part of my diploma studies in peacebuilding and conflict transformation, this foundation was reinforced by the valuable expertise of my brother and mentor, Mr. Babu Ayindo, MA ‘98; Dr. Carl Stauffer, then regional representative for the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) for Southern Africa; and DeEtte Beghtol, then MCC service worker seconded to MEF.

The formative leg of my peacebuilding journey was also “blessed” by the experiences of ��ݮ���� scholars, alumni and faculty including Mozambican brother Afiado Zungunza; Mzee John Katunga from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC); Mr. George Wachira, then director at Nairobi Peace Initiative-Africa; Krista Rigalo, MA ’00, and Fidel Lumeya, MA ’00, then MCC country representatives from Angola; and Barry Hart, a member of EMU faculty.

With great respect, the foundation these people contributed started me off and to a greater extent set me on a firmer peacebuilding journey. Globally, there is growing recognition that efforts in peace and conflict scholarships in molding a generation of peacebuilding practitioners will steer the next century into peace and stability. Thus, it’s this Mennonite exposure that drives me to claim a stake in this generation of peacemakers. Africa’s future, and certainly Zambia’s, is not anchored on undemocratic systems, and visionless and corrupt leadership, but more visionary and selfless peace-loving practitioners.

My stint at MEF was reinforced by a Winston Fellowship to attend the Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI) at EMU in 2003. This scholarship solidified my interaction and engagement with the Mennonites and peacemakers from other faith traditions, and provided benefits from the expertise of peace practitioners and scholars, notably professors Hizkias Assefa and Ron Kraybill. And one of my key take-aways from the 2003 SPI, particularly from these celebrated scholars, is the inspiration and renewed impetus to spread additional peacebuilding knowledge and tools. In sum, SPI gave me fresh cause to firmly contribute to cultivating positive peace in my seemingly peaceful country, Zambia.

After two months of the Winston internship with Mindolo Ecumenical Foundation, I was formally engaged as an instructor. This new appointment once again laid before me valuable opportunities to collaborate with Mennonite associates, some of whom I co-taught courses with during regular classes and the Africa Peacebuilding Institute (API) courses. For several years, I served as a co-instructor during the API working with, among others, West African MCC representative and EMU alumni, Brother Gopar Tapkida, MA ’01, from Nigeria. My firm peacebuilding foundation laid through the Mennonite tutelage and association was a precursor to subsequent scholarly engagements in Durban, South Africa and San Jose, Costa Rica.

The last several years, I have made my modest contribution to cultivating a culture of peace through trainings and workshops in Ethiopia, Japan, Rwanda, South Sudan (where I serve as an adjunct instructor at the RECONCILE Peace Institute), Uganda and Zimbabwe. Three years ago, I left MEF and joined the Dag Hammarskjöld Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies at The Copperbelt University as a lecturer. Despite exposure to other peacebuilding philosophies, I continue to appreciate the indelible orientation that the MCC/EMU-CJP alumni, colleagues and associates rendered continue to shape my peacebuilding vocation.

I particularly share my subscription to conflict transformation versus conflict resolution or management. I have lately been sharing some of the resources with colleagues within the Institute, such as the Little Books of Justice and Peacebuilding acquired through my EMU exposure and contact. Anchored on the foundation, as part of my doctoral ideas, I work on transformative mediation and social conflicts within my context. I am particularly interested in the churches’ interventions (intermediary roles and contributions) and the effects on ameliorating social conflicts including gender-based violence.

Descriptively, Zambia may be peaceful, but there are a myriad of socioeconomic issues including violence against women (widows and single mothers) that warrant attention. Demographic health studies shows that women suffer violence from the age of 15 and about 60% cases are attributed to violence by husbands or intimate partners. It may be disputed, but gender-based violence is a peacebuilding issue. And the need to explore transformative approaches (or assessing how transformative existing interventions are) to such conflicts is great.

Ignatius Kabale Mukunto js a lecturer and Coordinator of the Human Rights, Governance and Peacebuilding Program, under the Dag Hammarskjöld Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies of the Copperbelt University, Kitwe, Zambia.

• Zehr is “distinguished professor” of restorative justice, a pioneer in international restorative justice field; author, co-author or editor of about 22 books pertaining to restorative justice
• Zehr’s bestselling Little Book of Restorative Justice (over 110,000 sold) was cited as a reference in Handbook on Restorative Justice Programmes, published in 2006 by UN Office on Drugs and Crime following UN conferences in 2000, 2002 and 2005.
• Former CJP director Vernon Jantzi served on Working Party of Restorative Justice, a major resource at UN Congresses on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in 2000 and 2005. WPRJ drafted basic principles on restorative justice adopted by UN Economic and Social Council.
• ��Jantzi, professor emeritus of sociology, now works for Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR).

Carl Stauffer, PhD��

• ��Assistant professor of justice studies and co-director of EMU’s Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice
• As regional peace adviser in Southern Africa for Mennonite Central Committee, 2000-09, Stauffer was associated with peace accords, community-police forums, truth and reconciliation initiatives, and local community development structures, often interacting with UN agencies involved with post-conflict stability.
• The UN Secretary General’s 2004 Report on The Rule of Law and Transitional Justice in Conflict and Post-conflict Societies defines transitional justice as “the full range of processes and mechanisms associated with a society’s attempts to come to terms with a legacy of large-scale past abuses, in order to ensure accountability, serve justice and achieve reconciliation.”
• ��Stauffer elaborated on this theme in his “Restorative Interventions for Postwar Nations,” a chapter published in Restorative Justice Today – Practical Applications (Sage Publications, 2012).

Barry Hart, PhD��

• ��Professor of trauma, identity and conflict studies, former CJP academic dean
• Has conducted workshops on psychosocial trauma recovery and reconciliation in Northern Ireland, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Burundi and among Rwandan refugees in Tanzania.
• Lived and worked for years in Balkans, launching trauma and conflict transformation programs for schools, communities, religious leaders.
• Collaborated with UNICEF personnel in Liberia to create the Kukatonen (We Are One) Peace Theatre, along with a manual of the same title, centered on these themes: understanding conflict, active listening, conflict resolution, reconciliation and trauma healing.
• Developed a training manual Za Damire I Nemire (For Peace and Not for Peace: Opening the Door to Nonviolence) for UNICEF while in Croatia.
• Collaborated with UN humanitarian and relief agencies when working in Liberia, Tanzania and the Balkans.

��Lisa Schirch, PhD��

• Research professor
• Director of human security at the Alliance for Peacebuilding
• Senior advisor to “People Building Peace” conference held at UN headquarters in 2005, encompassing about 1,000 civil society peacebuilding delegates from 119 countries.
• Evaluator for the UN Peacebuilding Support Office to advise on grantmaking to support women in peacebuilding in 2011.
• Facilitated UNDP meeting in Fiji between military, government and civil society groups.
• Consultant to UNDP in 2012 to develop strategy for UNDP to fit into new UN Peacebuilding Architecture
• “The UN is central to the success of peacebuilding in many countries. UNDP has an opportunity to provide the link between short-term humanitarian response in the midst of a crisis and longer term support for building the foundations of peace. UNDP is also one of the few institutions that is positioned to bring together civil society, governments, international NGOs and donors to work together to support strategic peacebuilding.”

��Ron Kraybill, PhD��

• ��Founding faculty member of CJP (’76 graduate of sister college, Goshen), current Senior Advisor on Peacebuilding and Development United Nations, assigned by UNDP to Philippines, previously assigned to Lesotho
• ��Supports peace process in Mindanao.
• Worked behind scenes, 2009-13, to nurture peaceful elections in Lesotho.
• Supported process led by Lesotho heads of churches, working with gridlocked parliament to negotiate electoral agreement among political parties to pursue free and fair elections.
• Effort yielded Lesotho’s first free, fair and peaceful election since independence in 1966.
• Facilitated visit to Lesotho of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who oversaw signing of political pledge that committed parties to respect laws and accept outcome of election.
• “Mediation, facilitation and process design lie at the heart of almost all that I do; I strengthen human capacities to respond constructively to conflict.”

David Brubaker, MBA, PhD��

• ��Associate professor of organizational studies, co-author of The Little Book of Healthy Organizations.��
• Hired by UNICEF-Mozambique for peace education and conflict resolution trainings immediately after peace accord signed in 1992.
• On joint project of Mennonite Central Committee and World Council of Churches, interacted with UNHCR staff at Benako refugee camp in Tanzania in 1994.
• ��Applauds UN for work on human development, women’s rights, indigenous rights, and awareness of environmental perils. But adds: “The UN’s basic structure hasn’t changed since it was founded 68 years ago. Healthy organizations need to undergo a structural review process every three to five years to ensure that their structure is still meeting their mission and objectives.”
• “My main issue is with the UN Security Council, where the veto power of the five permanent members often blocks meaningful international action, as seen in the cases of Israel and Syria.”

Catherine Barnes, PhD��

• Associate professor of strategic peacebuilding and public policy
• Has been engaged with UN since the early 1990s, when helped conduct trainings in conflict analysis and resolution for diplomats and staff.
• Regularly involved in policy dialogue in the UN on peace processes, especially how to increase public participation for inclusive and comprehensive settlements and effective use of sanctions, incentives and conditionality.
• Served as advisor during 2002-05 to Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict and participated in UN discussions on roles of civil society in preventing armed conflict and building peace.
• ��Helped design and facilitate 2005 conference on this theme at UN headquarters in NYC, which involved about 1,000 people from civil society, governments and IGOs from around the world, including CJP alumni, faculty, staff, and partners.

Paulette Moore, MA ’09��

• Associate professor of the practice of media arts and peacebuilding
• As MA student, did practicum with Community Development Gender Equality and Children, an agency within UNHCR. There created a blog – itbeginswithme.wordpress.com – launched on International Women’s Day in March 2009.
• Next, as UNHCR consultant, worked on films in Kenya’s Kakuma refugee camp, along with a blog, in collaboration with a young woman filmmaker in that camp named Kate Ofwano, who is now in film school in Geneva.
• Moore recalls leaving career in corporate media to become more invested in community. “I didn’t want to keep being the kind of person who would helicopter in somewhere, do something, and helicopter back out,” as she thought UN personnel often did.
• ��Experience at UNHCR made her aware of a third way: “To partner with people who I really, really trust. Big organizations and community-based work aren’t necessarily exclusive.”

Amy Knorr, MA ’ 09��

• ��CJP practice coordinator
• Worked and lived in Haiti for 7.5 years total
• Worked with UNDP “disarmament, demobilization and reintegration”program 2006-07, on team to reintegrate gang members into society, often using stipends, vocational training, and cash to start small businesses.
• Didn’t work – community members were fearful; program heightened conflict rather than transformed it – i.e., it was not “conflict sensitive.”
• UN workers were required to wear bullet-proof vests and helmets, circulating with armed escorts when in dangerous urban areas. “This sent an uncomfortable message – were the UN workers’ lives more important than the Haitians’?’’
• With the UNDP at that time, “relationship-building and trust weren’t really there. There were civil society groups in existence in the communities where this project was working. But the UNDP didn’t work directly with these groups. They created new ones that conformed to the vision they’d dreamed up for the project – without the input of local groups that knew what things were really like.”
• The UNDP had $14 million to spend in this Haitian case: “The UN has a huge potential to reach many stakeholders, but attention must be given to conflict analysis.”

Ali Gohar, MA ’02

• Founding director Just Peace Initiatives (JPI) in Pakistan
• Was commissioner, 1987-2001, on UNHCR-funded project for 258 Afghan refugee camps, concentrating on community development, peacebuilding, drug use and HIV/AIDS, the plight of street children.
• Has partnered with UNDP, UNICEF, UNHCR and UNFPA to address humanitarian situations – when much of Pakistan was affected by devastating flooding; when 50 primary schools in Bajur Tribal Agency needed clean water and sanitation facilities; when four areas were assisted in restoring their livelihoods, building community-based infrastructure, and improving their governance.
• With UNICEF funding, JPI now working on two unprecedented projects on social cohesion and resilience in three areas – SWAT, DIR, and Bajur.
• With UNFPA funding, JPI addressing gender-based violence cases through alternative dispute resolution in camps housing large numbers of host-community and internally displaced peoples.

Manas Ghanem, MA’06��

• ��Project Development Officer, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), now based in London, England
• Native of Syria employed by UNHCR, 2006-11, delivering direct support to refugees and displaced peoples due to violent conflict in such countries as Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait, Libya, Tunisia, and Yemen.
• “My work now [beginning in 2012] is more of coordination of private sector fundraising in support of various operations around the world, because most of the operations are underfunded, and refugees and displaced are in dire need of every support, even if little.”
• “UNHCR is present in every conflict area to help, with dedicated and passionate staff.”
• “The agency does not have a political mandate to influence political peacemaking. But I see it as one of the most effective peacemakers on the ground, with its efforts to reduce the suffering and to call the international community to show compassion and participate in sharing the burden of helping.”
• “Often when I am in the middle of something problematic, I find myself recalling CJP classes or a discussion with a CJP professor regarding organizations, theory, human rights, practices in conflict transformation, mediation and restorative justice.”
• “Most importantly, I remember STAR (Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience) – I try to always find ways to take care of myself and to recall that self-care is important, if I am to help others.”

Amy Rebecca Marsico, MA ’09

• Manager of NYC-based stage productions; conflict and peacebuilding consultant
• Presented arts-based approaches to peacebuilding to UN Interagency Framework Team for Preventive Action
• Did practicum for her MA at UNHCR in the Community Development, Gender Equality and Children section.
• Promoted AGDM (age, gender and diversity mainstreaming), whereby refugee women, men, boys and girls contribute to the design and implementation of programs, identify own protection risks, and participate in finding sustainable solutions.
• Helped develop the Heightened Risk Identification Tool, a field tool used to identify refugees at risk.
• “To be part of work that was engaging in long-term change processes – seeing refugees as active partners instead of passively waiting for a handout – was incredibly meaningful.”

As with so many aspects of U.S. society and culture, the disaster relief community has its clear “pre-” and “post-9/11” periods. Back in the pre-days, the mentality and capabilities of organizations like FEMA and the Red Cross revolved around the physical needs of disaster victims: food, shelter and clothing. Within days of entering post-era, it became clear that the September 11 attacks pointed to the need for psychological support, not just physical assistance.

Within a week of September 11, 2001, Rick Augsburger contacted EMU’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP). Then working in Manhattan as the director of emergency programs for Church World Service – one of the relief organizations facing a challenge it wasn’t well equipped to handle – Augsburger knew about the pioneering work that had been done at CJP of connecting trauma healing to the theory and practice of peacebuilding. Three days after the attacks, he placed a call to CJP to ask for help.

“We were the only conflict transformation program that had any trauma studies in the curriculum,” remembers Jan Jenner, who was director of the Practice Institute at CJP. Through Jenner, Augsburger invited CJP to develop a trauma-healing program in response to the terrorist attacks and pledged full funding for the initiative.

Two weeks after 9/11, CJP professor Barry Hart was in New York City meeting with Augsburger and his staff about a programmatic response to the tragedy. When Jenner and Hart shared the concept with other faculty members and staff at CJP, the group collectively developed an outline of what was to become Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience, or STAR.

“I knew we would get strong commitment, high quality work and an ability to think outside of the box,” says Augsburger, a ’91 graduate of EMU who had previously worked with CJP on several trauma-related projects. “9/11 was something that none of us had experienced before, and we needed something different.”

In Augsburger’s eyes, CJP’s close institutional ties to the Mennonite church strengthened its ability to provide leadership in meeting the needs of traumatized groups. Religion, after all, was perceived as a major player in the events of 9/11, and leaders from a wide variety of religious traditions found themselves on the front lines of response within their own communities.

Putting together the pieces

“We had the pieces – trauma healing, restorative justice, a spiritual center – that we could put in place for the program that is now known as STAR,” says Jayne Docherty, a CJP professor of leadership and public policy who was involved in the program from its earliest planning stages. “Tapping the expertise of all the faculty members here, we were able to develop a holistic, integrative approach to the 9/11 crisis and its aftermath.”

The first STAR workshop was held in February of 2002. As STAR’s founding director, Carolyn Yoder had woven the strands of CJP’s work and her own trauma-counseling expertise into a viable short-term program. While the format and materials have constantly been tweaked and revised, the major elements of that initial workshop have remained largely the same. Later that spring, Yoder adapted and expanded the diagrams used by Barry Hart and psychologist Olga Botcharova – who had worked together in the war-torn Balkans – into a three-part model of trauma healing. This model, including an easy-to-remember snail diagram (see below), remains central to the STAR curriculum.

From the beginning, the intensive, one-week STAR courses have included an exploration of the nature and effects of trauma on individuals and communities as well as study and discussion on the relationship of trauma-healing to the other key pieces of CJP’s peacebuilding framework, including restorative justice, security, mediation and conflict transformation.

A decade prior to all this, Hart was in Liberia helping lead trauma healing and reconciliation workshops for people affected by that country’s civil war. Hart, then pursuing a doctorate in conflict analysis and resolution at George Mason University, was working with the Christian Health Association of Liberia, which was very interested in addressing the psychological wounds suffered by so many people in the country.

“I was coming in not as a psychologist but as a conflict transformation person,” says Hart. “It became very clear to me that these so-called ‘ethnic wars’ not only had an identity aspect, but a significant psychological one.”

Pioneer in linking trauma to conflict

Hart ended up spending two years in Liberia. He used the dozens of trauma-healing workshops he conducted there as field research for a dissertation that was one of the first academic works to draw clear links between the fields of conflict transformation and trauma healing.

In the summer of 1994, Hart gave a presentation on his work at a peacebuilding conference at EMU (the forerunner of today’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute). It struck a nerve, leading to a class on trauma healing and ultimately to the subject becoming integral to the MA curriculum.

Over the next five years, Hart continued to integrate trauma healing and conflict resolution while working in war-ravaged areas of the Balkans. He returned to EMU’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute each year to teach on the subject. Hart usually co-taught the course with Nancy Good, a clinical social worker and trauma expert who was a member of the CJP faculty from its early years and who also played a key role in pioneering a connection between trauma healing on the individual level with peacebuilding on a larger scale.

“CJP takes a very interdisciplinary approach to peacebuilding,” says Lisa Schirch, a research professor at EMU and the director of 3P Human Security. “We recognize that people’s personal and emotional wounds need to be addressed in addition to the structural, economic and political changes that are required for peacebuilding.”

“Psychosocial trauma and peacebuilding” is now one of the five academic concentrations offered to graduate students at CJP, overseen by Hart, who joined the faculty full time after leaving the Balkans in 1999. Even today, CJP remains one of a very few graduate-level peace programs in the United States that places such an emphasis on trauma healing.

Pushing edges of field

“In the 1990s, it was pushing the edges of the field to say ‘trauma matters,’ and it still is, as a matter of fact,” says Docherty. An important aspect of CJP’s trauma work is the recognition that “many of our students arrive traumatized, sometimes directly from ‘killing fields,’” adds Docherty, CJP’s new program director. “We have asked ourselves, ‘How can we support them?’ Giving them an education in trauma awareness and resilience is one way.”

Shortly after the inaugural STAR training, the program began to adapt its curriculum for different audiences. In 2002, Elaine Zook Barge interned with STAR as a graduate student to develop a Spanish-language version of the training. She helped lead the first Spanish STAR in November 2002 in Colombia; the first Spanish STAR at EMU was held the next month.

Another early adaptation was Youth STAR, designed by an international team of youth workers and intended to teach trauma skills to young people. (This effort was led by Vesna Hart, a native of Croatia who holds an MA in education from EMU.)

Grant funding from Church World Service supported the STAR program through 2005, by which time nearly 800 people from 38 states and 63 countries had participated in seminars on EMU’s campus, including the first sessions of Level II STAR. This advanced training prepares Level I graduates to themselves become practitioners, leading their own trauma-resilience workshops based on the STAR curriculum.

Given that the program had run longer and grown larger than many had expected at the beginning, CJP decided to continue STAR using a fee-for-service model. In 2006, as STAR grappled with the challenges of sustaining itself financially, Barge became the second director of the STAR program.

Adaptation, new directions and new partnerships have characterized STAR in the years since. Barge helped develop a Village STAR curriculum for use in settings where pictures tend to work better than lots of written words. Coming to the Table – now an associate organization of CJP that uses the STAR trauma-healing framework to address the legacy of slavery in the United States –��also grew directly out STAR’s work at EMU.

Coming to the Table’s history-rooted twist on STAR led to Transforming Historical Harms, which looks at “historic traumas” that continue to inflict pain decades or centuries after a traumatic event or circumstance has ended (see article).

Global attention to trauma

From 2002 to 2007, STAR workshops were held in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, Uganda, Burundi and South Sudan. In 2008, CJP graduates working in Myanmar requested STAR assistance following a devastating cyclone. Also upon request, STAR went to Mexico in 2009, and Northern Ireland, Bolivia and Haiti in 2010 (for more on the work in Haiti, see this article).

The geographic spread of STAR has also occurred domestically. In Massachusetts, Beverly Prestwood-Taylor, a United Church of Christ minister and trauma-specialist who has taken courses at CJP, adapted STAR for veterans and their supporters into a two-day program called the Journey Home from War (see article). Donna Minter, a STAR alumna from Minnesota, returned home to found the Minnesota Peacebuilding Leadership Academy, which has hosted six STAR trainings since 2010 (see article).

Since she took over as director, Barge estimates that one-third of STAR trainings have taken place at EMU, one-third have been held elsewhere in the United States, and one-third have happened overseas. The total number people who’ve taken STAR trainings over the past 11 years is difficult to determine, given the proliferation of off-site trainings. What is certain is this: hundreds of individual STAR trainings have taken place on five continents, reaching thousands of people directly and rippling out far more broadly yet, as participants use the trauma-awareness and resilience principles in their personal and professional lives.

Rick Augsburger, whose phone call to CJP days after 9/11 led to the creation of STAR, says the disaster-relief community today is far better prepared to recognize and address the psychological impacts of disasters. While STAR can’t take full credit for that, it played an early and important role in introducing trauma awareness to these groups, says Augsburger, now the managing director of the KonTerra group, a consulting firm based in Washington D.C. that focuses on improving clarity, resilience and learning in domestic and international organizations. Growing awareness of and interest in trauma-related issues extends beyond disaster-relief agencies (see article).

“Because of the work we’ve done over the last 18 years here, people have started to pay attention to trauma,” says Barry Hart. “The major funders out there are becoming more and more aware of the need to incorporate trauma elements into the larger peacebuilding framework.”

Looking ahead, this new, wider interest in trauma awareness represents an opportunity for STAR to provide consultation, trainings and workshops to equip organizations with staff who are able to do trauma-sensitive programming (. “As more individuals want to share STAR with others, the program is facing the challenge of making sure that what others call STAR includes the complex mix of psychosocial trauma healing, restorative justice and conflict transformation components that make STAR unique,” says Jayne Docherty, incoming program director for CJP. “We’re working on a process for certifying STAR trainers and practitioners that will be available to students in the MA program as well as to other individuals.”

Barry Hart, PhD, professor of trauma, identity and conflict studies, pointed to recent neuroscience suggesting that humans have an innate desire to bond and empathize with one another. Framed in different terms, pervasive physical and structural violence is at odds with our own biology, and therefore��will someday, somehow, come to an end. “You feel that in your bones,” says Hart. “That gives you not only hope, but strength and patience to go forward.”

Though often used interchangeably, hope and optimism represent different concepts, says David Brubaker, PhD, associate professor of organizational studies. Optimism, or lack thereof, is short-term, pragmatic and based on specific facts. Hope, though, looks above and beyond specific facts; it is rooted in an idea often referenced by Martin Luther King, Jr. – that the “arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

The distinction is an important one for peacebuilders working in challenging environments that don’t justify an expectation that things are soon to get better.

“Optimism is often not warranted in our work with intractable conflict, but hope is something that has to be sustained,” Brubaker says.

At the same time, it is important to acknowledge the reality of despair and disillusionment that often accompanies peacebuilding work.

“We do the field of peacebuilding a disservice if we only cast our work within a utopian future vision,” says Carl Stauffer, PhD, assistant professor of development and justice studies.

There are no quick fixes in “deeply complex, nuanced and layered” conflicts like those faced by alumni in the Middle East, he continues, although that should not be mistaken for ineffectiveness. Doctors are still valuable, Stauffer notes, despite the fact they have yet to eliminate disease. While he also finds hope in the idea that seemingly impossible conflicts will be resolved – the end of apartheid in South Africa being one example – he says that peacebuilders should not be afraid to acknowledge and discuss “discouragement or despondency among practitioners in a tough place like the Middle East.”

Better networking among CJP and its alumni working in challenging environments was identified both by alumni interviewed for Peacebuilder and CJP faculty as one way to address the discouragement they sometimes face. In its new strategic plan completed in the spring of 2012, CJP sets forth developing new programs to strengthen alumni networking for this very reason.

To Jayne Docherty, PhD, professor of leadership and public policy, the shifting dynamics of conflict in the Middle East and the combination of hope and despair these elicit from alumni, also present CJP with an opportunity to evaluate its own role in peacebuilding.

“When the world changes around them, peacebuilders need to hold hope, practice humility and revise their practices,” she says. “What are we at CJP and in the U.S. peace community doing differently in response to the new realities in the Middle East? Have we examined our premises and our assumptions? Or, are we still promoting old practices [like] dialogue or taking the side of the oppressed? What can we learn from our graduates?” — AKJ

Somaliland’s customary law (xeer) determines daily life and is used to address a range of conflicts, including murder. This is where camels play a major role. For example: If a clan member is murdered by someone from a different clan, a council of elders from both sides will meet to hear the case and determine the punishment of the offender. In a case I became familiar with, the offender’s clan had to pay the family member of the victim and his clan a total of 120 camels. This is a significant number of animals that represented the loss of meat, milk and status to the offender’s clan, but symbolically addressed the loss of life of the victim for his family and clan.

Although the exchange of camels for such a crime is still very much practiced in rural Somaliland, urbanization is growing due to wide-spread drought and the drive to modernize. Therefore money is used in a growing number of these transactions. One camel is the equivalent of 100 US dollars. For the murder noted above, $12,000 would have to be paid as restitution to the victim’s family. In context, it shows the great worth of the camel and its centrality in the issues of life and death in the Somali culture. So when I did see my first camel, I already had a great appreciation for its status and value to local people. Within the framework of Somaliland customary law, the camel is king.

Read on for Barry’s article, co-written with Muhyadin Saed, in the December 2010 issue of the Africa Peace and Conflict Journal (Vol. 3 No. 2):��

[ is currently the Academic Director at EMU’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, and is Professor of Trauma, Identity, and Conflict Studies. Camel photo by doug88888 , under CC license.]

Following is a collection of audio interviews with CJP-affiliated professors, talking about ��ݮ����’s recent . ��The interviews were conducted, produced, and edited by undergraduate students from a spring 2011 audio production class in EMU’s department. ��Students asked faculty members how attachment theory might inform their teaching and practice of peacebuilding.

Kisumu, Kenya

Babu Ayindo grew up in the slums of Nairobi, where he says people experience injustice and violence daily and often wonder whether life is worth living.

After finishing the BEd program at Kenyatta University, Babu became the founding artistic director of the Amani People’s Theatre in Nairobi. “It was inspired by Brazilian educators Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal,” he says. “Our drama aimed at not just entertaining, but also raising questions on peace and social justice, so that communities could join in both the acting and in seeking collective solutions to the problems their communities were facing.”

Babu elaborates on the role of the arts in conflict transformation in Peacebuilding in Traumatized Societies, a 2008 book edited by EMU professor Barry Hart. Babu’s chapter is titled “Arts Approaches to Peace: Playing Our Way to Transcendence.”

In 2009-10, Babu consulted in over 10 countries besides his own Kenya. Recently, he has been a consultant to the German foundation Konrad Adenauer-Stiftung, the Austrian foundation DKA, the Fellowship of Christian Councils and Churches in the Horn and Great Lakes of Africa, Catholic Relief Services in Kenya, and PACT Kenya.

He has taught peacebuilding, often linked to the arts, around the world, including at the Peace Center of the Mindolo Ecumenical Peace Foundation (Zambia), the Caux Scholars Program (Switzerland), Mindanao Peace Institute (Philippines), Canadian School of Peacebuilding, American University in Washington DC, the JustPeace Youth Camp in the Fiji Islands, and EMU’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI).

Babu frequently collaborates with what he jokingly calls the “EMU mafia,” referring to the thousands of people who have come through one of CJP’s programs, such as the MA program, SPI and STAR (Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience).

“I meet the ‘EMU mafia’ not just in Africa, but all over the world – from Winnipeg [Canada] to the Fiji Islands – while doing trainings, research and social action processes within civil society and government,” he says.

When not traveling for work, Babu focuses on cultivating a healthy relationship with nature, acknowledging it as the sustainer of all life. Babu, his wife Miriam, and three children – 16-year-old Biko, 11-year-old Sankara, and 6-year-old Che – grow much of what they consume on their quarter-acre farm in the peri-urban city of Kisumu. They raise cattle, goats, and chickens and grow passion fruit, mangos, cabbage, kale, tomatoes, and onions.

Read more about Babu in an article published in the fall/winter 2006 issue of Peacebuilder (). It talks about Babu’s role in a workshop in rural southern Sudan that was threatened by drunken, armed men in a pick-up truck.

Colombo, Sri Lanka

Fourteen years ago, Sam Gbaydee Doe came to CTP from his native land of Liberia, where about 10% of the population had died, or would die, in one of Africa’s bloodiest civil wars, from 1989 to 1996, followed by a shorter war, from 1999 to 2003.

Liberian warlords used child soldiers to commit atrocities – rape and murder people of all ages and genders, including members of the children’s own families. Liberia’s civil war claimed lives from nearly every Liberian family, displaced most from their homes, and reduced the country’s economy to rubble. The strife also spread to Liberia’s neighbors, contributing to the destabilization of all of West Africa.

Sam needed a place to recover personally from the trauma he had experienced, as well as a place to explore ways to prevent such barbarity from occurring again. Encouraged by Barry Hart (a future CJP professor) – whom Sam met while both were doing conflict transformation and trauma awareness workshops in Liberia – and financially assisted by the Mennonite Board of Missions, Sam came to EMU in May of 1996.

In October 1998, at the end of his MA studies, Sam teamed up with a later graduate of CTP, Emmanuel Bombande (MA ’02) to launch the West African Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP). Sam became its first executive director.

“I left EMU fired up to translate a dream into a reality,” Sam said in a September 2010 interview. “I dreamed of a regional movement of civil society that would collaborate with regional intergovernmental bodies to restore not just stability in Africa but democratic freedom and prosperity. I dreamed of establishing an early-warning system throughout civil society that would head off violent conflict. Those dreams became reality in just five years. The profound thing was the speed at which ordinary people mobilized for peace.”

As an example, WANEP provided support to a Liberian social worker Leymah Gbowee, who organized the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace. This grassroots women’s organization was instrumental in ending Liberia’s war in 2003 and facilitating the election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first female president of an African nation. (Leymah is a 2007 MA grad.)

With seed money of $90,000 from the Winston Foundation, WANEP grew in two years from grouping 13 organizational representatives from six countries to 300 member groups from 14 countries. By 2000, WANEP’s annual budget was $1.2 million. By 2004, its budget had doubled. Sam incredulously asks himself: “How did we get from no organization in 1998 to being the largest peacebuilding organization in Africa in 2004, with 22 staff members [at its headquarters in Accra, Ghana] and offices in 14 other countries?” WANEP now runs its own version of SPI, the West African Peacebuilding Institute.

Few people or organizations make headline news for civil wars prevented, numbers of child soldiers quietly rehabilitated and reintegrated into society, or elections held without major violence. Yet WANEP and its partner organizations deserve much credit for their contributions to the growing stability of the majority of the countries in West Africa.

In 2004 Sam began working toward a doctorate in peace studies at the University of Bradford in England. The next year, he went to work for the United Nations as a consultant to its Liberia Mission, followed by a one-year stint with the UN Development Programme Pacific Regional Office in Fiji.

Since 2007 Sam has worked for the UN in Sri Lanka. He completed his doctorate in the spring of 2010. “After my intense work in West Africa, I felt I needed another opportunity to retreat, reflect, and reengage,” he explains.

His doctorate dissertation was on “indigenizing post-war state reconstruction,” a topic that links building peace to building a stable, democratic state. As an advisor and analyst in a country emerging from 30 years of civil war, Sam oversees trainings on conflict-sensitive development, dialogue and reconciliation, and other topics in Sri Lanka. Sam is the 2002 recipient of EMU’s annual Distinguished Service Award.

Harrisonburg, Virginia

Jan Jenner is outranked only by Howard Zehr for being the longest-serving full-time employee currently at CJP. Over the last 13 years, she has been a student, grant writer, administrator, book author, and teacher at CJP.

She and her husband Hadley formerly served with Mennonite Central Committee in Kenya.

Books she co-authored – When You are the Peacebuilder: Stories and Reflections on Peacebuilding from Africa (2001) and A Handbook of International Peacebuilding: Into the Eye of the Storm (2002) – continue to be widely referenced. Most issues of Peacebuilder, for instance, cite at least one of these books.

“CJP is certainly more rigorous than it was when I was a student,” Jan says. “It is larger, more structured.” She notes that the CTP graduate program began in the 1990s with professors drawn from other fields, such as sociology, religion, social work and history (of crime). By 2001, however, CJP had three professors with PhDs in the field: professors Lisa Schirch, Barry Hart and Jayne Docherty had all earned their doctorates at George Mason University’s Institute of Conflict Analysis and Resolution.

CJP’s evolution reflected a trend, says Jan: “The field has professionalized over time. It depends more on bureaucracies than individual people. It is less led by Westerners. People know a lot more about what they are doing and why. We have moved from working on an anecdotal basis to evidence-based work.”

She expresses concern, though, that the field may become “too professional.” She doesn’t want people to think “they can’t do anything unless they have the right [academic] degrees. I don’t think we should be dis-empowering ‘Joe on the street’ from working for peace.”

She is also concerned by the disconnection she sees between “the short-term orientation of most of the funding and the long-term commitment necessary to stabilize communities.”

Jan is the behind-the-scenes administrator responsible for launching STAR (Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience) after the events of 9/11 and for the founding of Coming to the Table, an initiative to deal with the legacy of slavery in the United States.