U.S.I.P Special Report

United States Institute of Peace, Washington D.C.

"Graduate-level academic institutions are not adequately preparing students for careers in international peace and conflict management. Curricula need to incorporate more applied skills, cross-sectoral coursework, and field-experience opportunities.

Unlike most faculty, students, and alumni, employers see substantial room for improvement in preparing students for the field.

Overseas experience is, for employers, the most valuable asset.

General project management skills—program planning and design, monitoring and evaluation, computer literacy, report writing skills, budgeting, staff management, research skills, grant writing, and knowledge of the funding and policy world—and cross-cultural competencies and language skills are critical.

International peace and conflict management practices increasingly overlap with more traditional work, such as human rights, humanitarian issues, and development programming.

Employers want candidates who have a holistic understanding of international conflict work, specialized knowledge and skills, practical know-how, and political savvy, yet often fail to grasp what academic programs are in fact teaching students to prepare them for the field.

Academic programs need to strengthen their outreach and interaction with employers and to market the value of their programs.To better prepare themselves for the field, recent graduates and alumni are seeking to increase their applied education, field experience, project management skills, mentoring, and career guidance."

About the Report

"This report, requested by the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) as part of its response to the focus on education and training provided for in the legislation that created it, examines the match between graduate academic programs in international peace and conflict, and the needs of organizations and agencies that hire individuals for conflict focused work in the field."

Here is a report worth reading from the United States Institute of Peace.  I find its counsel applies across multiple disciplines.  The Special Report in summary:

5 Ways To Grow as a Global Citizen—and An Engaged Local One

The latest U.S. Department of State issued a Sudan Update.  
Two lines caught my interest:

"Partnership and collaboration are essential to our efforts in the region...working closely with the African Union, United Nations, Arab League members, and my fellow Envoys from the UK, EU, France, Russia, and China to ensure success."   Who are the treetops? 

                                                                      

"We're also directly supporting organizations that will build the capacity of Darfuri development NGOs, identify opportunities for reconciliation activities, and conduct outreach to internally displaced persons (IDPs), refugees, and Arab and nomadic tribes to ensure their voices are heard in the peace process." Can you identify the grassroots?

 If you've had the courage to read Half the Sky by Kristof and WuDunn, you'll get the reference to grass and trees (and if you haven't, do add to your summer reading list).  

Understanding collaborative process and effort requires delving deeply: How closely will the African Union, U.N., Arab League members and other envoys work to ensure Sudan's success?  What defines success and stability for Sudan and its high-conflict, post-conflict zones?  How do we begin to understand the stakes and interests the above groups have in any particular region?  How will transfer of power work?  Does the average citizen have access to this information?  It takes commitment and time to understand accurately and well.  

For the everyday citizen working and living in the U.S., we hope to learn what we can through reports, journals, features, and government blogs at least.  To begin, we'll take a walk through the grass, talk, tell stories.  This is a good way to start connecting to the rest of the world as global citizens: 

1.  Learn the stories of IDPs, refugees, and other survivors.  

2.  Appreciate the risk humanitarian and peacekeeping volunteers endure to work for others.  Psychological research tells us that many workers can experience the same physical and post-traumatic perils as the people they serve; they are not immune to kidnapping, injury or death by violence.  

3.  Don't take my word for it.  Read thoughts of a UNICEF Child Protection Officer and what it means to be a global citizen.

4.  Once you are moved by these first-hand accounts around the world, you'll be inspired to know what's going on in your own backyard, neighborhood, and community, too.  Volunteer or research ways to give locally, to start.

5.  When traveling abroad, research the diversity of local ethnic groups, their languages, faiths and customs.  Understand a region's historical and imminent conflicts.  Suspend premature judgment to optimize learning and understanding.  Add a community service component to your plans even if traveling to transitioning and developed nations; preferable length of service is often six months to one year or more.

These basic suggestions remind us that developing multicultural awareness is a life-long endeavor and the ways in this learning process are many.    

Photo One: Sudan Aid Recipient. AP Photo. Jerome Daley

Photo Two:Wikimedia Archives

Management and Leadership: Begin Within.

My most frequently-asked questions to date have been:

What can I do about a manager who is verbally offensive?  Doesn't understand me or fails to genuinely listen?  Is disrespectful and unpredictable in their handling of employee mistakes?  Takes sides and is unfair?

These frustrated voices rise and call for help from corporate cubicles, library reference desks, non-profit offices, and elementary and middle school classrooms.  The questions and their origins go on, ad infinitum, and speak to the countless ways employees--and the greater organization--can suffer under unconsciously harmful leadership practices.  And I'm not surprised to learn that these same managers have a few complaints of their own about employee performance or communication.  For the purposes of coping and practicing empathy, employees will find it helpful to investigate dynamics on their own to understand what their superiors are going through personally and professionally.    

While the Manager/Employee relationship is interdependent, the focus today will be on managers and their call to leadership because they bear the burden of power and its responsible use.  Of the hundreds of articles circulated on management and leadership, the following blog posted by Harry Spence reiterates my own sentiments:  the real work begins within; in the heart and intellect of those in leadership where constant awareness of their own mind and actions can prevent potential harm inflicted from the wielding of rank or power over others.   

The question moving forward: How do we convene for the purpose of restoring damaged workplace relationships?  Does your organization have the space and leadership to do this? 

A Peaceable Classroom in the Making

What is The Peaceable Classroom?  What Can Be Achieved?

I was invited this year by one Bay Area classroom to help create a climate of peace within their group to support the children in their optimal learning and positive sense of community.  Perhaps I could set up a table or give a presentation?  This question has paved the way for more sustainable and lasting change in classroom dynamics and inspires my research and writing for:

Creating the Peaceable Classroom:
How to Facilitate Emotional Awareness and Friendship-Building for Our Children
Grade Level: Pre-K

A special component that deserves more attention and forms the basis for the handbook is this:  The essential work with emotions; their three functions, their deescalation and their harnessed, creative power in the total approach towards creating a culture of peace in the microcosm of the classroom and has implications for the school, family, community and world:

1.  The Peaceable Classroom is a fun, safe place that will expand our children’s capacity to understand, express and regulate their own emotions to ask for what they want and need. 

2.  It will nurture their ability to build friendships and make peace with others as their skills deepen in practices of: Empathy, Compassion, Nonviolence, Fairness, Trust, Respect for Self, Respect for others, Respect for their surroundings and Celebration of Diversity.

3.  It will inspire their ability to create solutions that benefit more than just themselves.

This work is achieved by the children, facilitated by their teachers, and supported by their families.  Vital first steps in creating a program for any group is to observe, listen, and conduct extensive needs assessments for all involved in creation and implementation.  Consult with experts on developmentally appropriate programming.  Plan for evaluation and follow-up to assess needed change.  Include parents and children in soliciting feedback.

There are many ways to create The Peaceable Classroom.  This handbook will provide options for exercises and ideas in the following chapters:

•    Emotions (Working With the Child)

•    Music, Song, Movement and Dance

•    Art (Drawing, Painting, Constructing, Sculpting)

•    Theatre (Role-play, Puppetry, Storytelling)

•    Children’s Literature

•    Sensory Exploration (Working with texture and weight)

•    Group Games and One Group Project.

We are positioned to plan adaptations of this short handbook for multiple grade levels and working towards translation in at least eight languages to reach our multilingual communities.  I truly look forward to writing the Acknowledgments page.

Recommended Reading:Holding These Truths: Empowerment and Recognition in Action : Interactive Case Study Curriculum for Multicultural Dispute Resolution

In One School, Resistance Signaled New Hope

Nearly thirteen years ago, the Rwandan News Agency with the New York Times presented us with a story that will remain with me for all my days.  In the post-conflict period of the Rwandan genocide, in a school resting between Zairian and Rwandan borders, a survivor retold how one teacher and seventeen schoolgirls were shot and killed by gunmen after the girls refused an order to separate themselves into two ethnic groups: Hutu and Tutsi. They resisted the attacker's attempt to label, isolate, humiliate, and kill a part of their school's community.  In one moment, this group of girls chose to say no to a system that had, in prior months, managed to annihilate over 500,000 (mostly Tutsi) Rwandans.

Perhaps they did not realize the impact their choice and lives would have upon others around the world who work towards creating a peaceable community, who walk on common ground, and who honor our common humanity.  Their lives have impacted mine.  Of the eighteen questions we can ask to initiate deeper understanding of the Rwandan Genocide or any conflict in our lives and global community, one question is answered in this story:  What capacity for peace can be identified?

Recommended Reading 

Preventing Genocide: A Blueprint for U.S. Policymakers by Madeleine K. Albright, William S. Cohen
The Psychology of Humiliation: Somalia, Rwanda/Burundi, and Hitler's Germany by E.G. Lindner
Left to Tell, By Imaculee Ilibagiza
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch

Photo Credit: U.S. Department of State