How To Build Peace Locally

Editor's Notes

• #3: Session Description: From 2016 to 2019, Rotaractors and youth leaders in Uganda, Mexico, and Colombia have taken part in Positive Peace Workshops, gaining skills to create networks and build peace locally. These workshops are core activities of the Rotary - Institute for Economics and Peace Partnership. In this session, you will participate in an interactive, hands-on activity showing key concepts and tools used in these Workshops. You will come away inspired to build peace with new tools in your clubs and communities.
• #4: Hello everybody and thank you Pam, Summer, Ana and Flavio for teaming up on this session. Ovid, a Roman Poet who lived in the first century before our era stated that “Dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence.” Peace, as a mission, as a goal, is a long term commitment to improve ourselves and our communities. Rotary has this commitment, and one way to promote it has been through the development of Positive Peace Workshops in nations around the world. Uganda, Mexico and Colombia have been so far the operation grounds for an initiative to strengthen Rotaract and youth leaders with knowledge, tools and foundations to create networks and peace projects in their communities and beyond.
• #5: In partnership between Rotary and the Institute for Economics and Peace, we are currently running a Global Grant that includes four phases: Phase 1 was the opening stage for stakeholder mapping and community coalition building. From there we identified a large and diverse group of 150 participants that were invited to Phase 2: a National Positive Peace Encounter where specific tools and training were provided. Phase 3 included the selection of +30 key leaders to provide them with further specific tools; it was also the place to set the foundation of a network of positive peace leaders. We are in Phase 4 now, where we accompany those leaders and that network to keep up the momentum and move into plans of action and peace project implementation. The Positive Peace Workshops are one way Rotary and the Institute for Economics & Peace Partnership has to build up peace capacities among youth leaders. On this 2019 we are simultaneously running two projects, one in Mexico and one in Colombia, different in implementation but similar in essence. [Explanation based on the slide information].
• #6: How we define peace is important. Some of you may think about big picture, philosophical ideas. Others may consider actions—how peace is lived and practiced. Others may see images of violence and war and think that peace is the “opposite” of that – and others may think about hippies. There’s no one “correct” way to define peace. On an international level, peace hasn’t always been taken very seriously. But things are changing and organizations like Rotary - as well as organizations like the ones represented here today - are shifting the conversation on just what peace is (and isn’t), how peace is measured, and how peace is practiced - how peace is "done."
• #7: Considering Rotary’s work through a Positive Peace lens, we can see how all Areas of Focus are interconnected—they address social, economic, and political factors and relations—and consider the various, interrelated facets of human development.   We can extend this connection, this overlap, between the Pillars of Positive Peace and projects in your community that fall within Rotary’s Areas of Focus. This means that a project that appears to focus on just one theme is more than likely connected to and overlaps with other themes.
• #9: The Rotary-IEP partnership is centered on three main activities/ tools: 1. Creation of the Rotary Peace Academy: an online learning platform designed to strengthen knowledge and skills for Rotarians, enhancing their work in peace and conflict resolution and Rotary’s other Areas of Focus. Graduates will be capable of delivering and utilizing key concepts in the areas of peace in their own communities, creating a corps of people working locally to strengthen the building blocks of peaceful societies. 2. Tools for clubs and districts to carry out their own Positive Peace presentations and activities, further exploring the framework of positive peace and how it aligns with Rotary’s work 3. Positive Peace Workshops Designed to bring together diverse groups of community leaders and peacebuilders to discuss the practical, impactful, and measurable investments that can be made in communities using the pillars of Positive Peace. Large-scale pilot workshops will take place in Mexico and Colombia in 2019, hosted by Rotary clubs and Districts using funding provided by Rotary Global Grants.