Help us empower emerging humanitarians
2023 National Community College Peacebuilding Seminar
Since 2013, the National Community College Peacebuilding Seminar has been held in Washington D.C. for educators and students interested in the critical role that community colleges play in higher education, with panels on a range of topics related to peacebuilding, conflict, human rights, social justice, international affairs, and nonviolence.
This year's seminar will be held Friday, October 27 and Friday, November 3 from 11:00 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET, by Zoom. It is again sponsored by the Forage Center for Peacebuilding and Humanitarian Education, a not-for-profit corporation advancing experiential learning on humanitarian and peacebuilding practices.
For full-time and part-time educators, the registration fee is $80, which must be paid in advance of the seminar. Graduate students will be charged $25, and undergraduate (including community college) students can attend free of charge. Registration allows live interaction and participation with speakers and guests.
U.S.-based educators for all sectors, international educators, and students are invited to attend.
If you are interested in attending the seminar, please complete this form.
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What happens when a financial crisis is compounded by a pandemic? What things are necessary to bring a 40-year-old hyperlocal peacebuilding organization back from the brink of shutting down to becoming a more responsive and agile force for peace? Let's talk about the challenges, triumphs, and lessons learned from striving to revive an aging organization.
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Carter School and Tampere Peace Research Institute (TAPRI) have partnered to launch a program aimed at mobilizing higher education institutions in Ukraine and beyond for post-war reconstruction planning. This initiative focuses on capacity building and knowledge support, utilizing innovation, think-tanking, networking, and community-centered approaches. It seeks to bridge the gap between policy-making and knowledge communities, enhancing communication and coordination. Additionally, the project promotes local ownership and inclusivity by involving Higher Education institutions and serving as a central hub for global expertise in support of Ukraine's reconstruction efforts.
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Every Campus A Refuge (ECAR) mobilizes higher education institutions to support refugee resettlement efforts. Founded in 2015, ECAR is inspired by Pope Francis’ call on every European parish to host a refugee family and calls on every college and university in the US to do the same. ECAR's mission is to revolutionize refugee resettlement and higher education by mobilizing American colleges and universities to provide free temporary housing, campus resources, and community support to newcomers and to facilitate their successful integration all while engaging their own students in transformative curricular and co-curricular experiences and deepening local community ties.
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Rather than just think about how Fulbright can better engage with community colleges, I’d like to also focus on how we, as social justice-driven and nonprofit-based instructors, are able to embrace Fulbright in return. As a professor of History, English, and Gender Studies at Community College of Philadelphia and last year’s Fulbright Chair of North American History in Mexico, I look forward to sharing my experience about the roles and responsibilities, as well as feasibility and commitment, between 2-year colleges and Fulbright programs.
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Building students’ capacities as agents of change is increasingly critical at community colleges to address global challenges of inequity, injustice, and conflict. Given its ability to prepare students for interdisciplinary thinking and intercultural collaboration, international education has been a strong mechanism to build agency in students. Both Harper and Oakton College use a global region focus as a framework for their internationalization efforts across campus. The hallmark of both strategies is to invest in internationalized faculty professional development opportunities to, in turn, build impactful programs for students. During this session we will discuss the internationalization approaches at both colleges, including our use of professional development programs to develop curriculum and graduation concentrations rooted in social transformation.
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Akash Pandey and Alisha Gurung
This study examined how the Parma, (an indigenous reciprocal labor exchange practice) has helped maintain social cohesion in Bidur Municipality, Nuwakot, Nepal. Through eight purposive case studies, this study found that Parma has played a significant role in maintaining social cooperation amongst the locals during critical times such as during harvesting period, festivals, and rituals. However, the practice has experienced a decline due to the increasing trend of internal and international migration and because of a shift from voluntary labor support to monetary transactions as the means of assistance.
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This workshop is designed for educators and peace studies faculty who are seeking to gain fundamental knowledge and develop best practices in peace pedagogy to incorporate into their university classrooms. The goals of this session are to explore the transformative goals of peace studies; to identify the underlying principles of transformative practice; and to provide a space to reflect on our own pedagogy and its impacts.
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Art for Peace is a project that brings together artists from different places with a common purpose: to share their indignation, protest and critics through their talent in a peaceful way. The first edition was in 2004 and it started as a tribute to a local artist who was killed by bandits. And we are now entering the VI edition with participants from Africa, Asia and Latin America. All artists shared a short description of their purpose and some of the violent situations they live where injustice and fear of persecution haunts them. The arts represent the hope and reality that they've experienced and dream of.
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Learn Practical Peacebuilding Skills and Take Home an Evidence-based Framework and tools that you can use to Develop Effective Positive Peace Projects in your community and around the world. Learn more about Positive Peace right here.
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Myra Dahgaypaw and Samantha Tshuma
Increasingly community colleges are starting points to careers that lead to global and domestic peacebuilding, social justice, and political change. In this session, graduates of community colleges who are current students at George Mason University's Carter School will share about their own journeys and research and career interests.
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All over the world, storytelling is an important way to pass on historical and cultural information. Listening to diverse oral histories and narratives can help students build empathy, create a more global perspective, and alter assumptions about a particular topic. The act of listening to audio and video can help elicit an emotional response as students put themselves in someone else’s shoes. Despite all this, storytelling is still underutilized in the creation of college-level academic assignments. This presentation will demonstrate ways storytelling can be a peace building strategy by developing compassion and reducing ethnocentrism.
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What is happening in the Africa’s Great Lakes Region (AGLR), especially, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), its largest nation? Who are waging wars there? Why are they massively killing unarmed populations, committing genocides, counter-genocides, and other mass atrocities? What is the attitude of the world, especially the USA, the academia, etc.? Is peace and stability still possible there? How? By whom? This short presentation provides basic information to US community colleges educators to assist
them their building of their curricula and teachings in Peace and Conflict Studies program or African Studies Departments.
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Pualani Enos is a lecturer for the Matsunaga Institute for Peace at University of Hawaiʻi Mānoa, and owner of Kaulia Creates, LLC. Pualani has geneological and familial ties with the islands of Hawaii, Maui, Molokaʻi and Oahu. She lives in Upcountry Maui.
Pualani will describe her experiences over the two months proceeding the Wildfires on Maui and will provide some historical context prior to the wildfires. She will share stories of her journey in the practice of the ALOHA Spirit, and introduce you to the Hawaiian Sources who have shaped her leadership. She will facilitate a discussion of how of how ʻIke Kupuna, ancestral knowledge, indigenous epistemology and place-based frameworks have a unique power to transform complex conflict from complex trauma into community-informed solutions to benefit place, people and future generations.