Who we are

We believe in the capacity for good in every person.

Our mission is to nurture cultures and infrastructures of positive peace that are connective, cultivate trust, and are locally-determined.

We envision a world where peace is embodied in how we live, relate, and create together— where people:

  • Live in kinship with the land, their lineage, and each other,

  • Relate to one another and themselves with trust in our common humanity,

  • Co-create cultures of peace grounded in local wisdom and self-determined infrastructures and innovations.

the problem

Communities today are fractured by disconnection, rising polarization, and a widespread inability to cultivate positive peace. This has led to strained and volatile relationships, overburdened social and legal systems, economic instability, and cycles of conflict and violence we no longer know how to stop. At the core is a culture shaped by displacement and avoidance— severing people from their roots, their shared humanity, and their deep knowledge systems for building in sustainable and healing ways.

To break the cycle, we must reconnect with our origins, reprogram ourselves, and build new cultures of peace together: grounded in human kinship, trust, and the wisdom held within the histories of our local communities.

our values

  • in the world today so much of what we do seems to be an add-on for this or for that; for efficiency or effectiveness in one way or another. seeking peace, on the other hand, is less another thing to add to our already busy schedules, and more like the removing of an excess: a letting go. in order for us to connect with one another in resonance we first need to be present with each other without ulterior motives. connection comes when we share space in nested and genuine authenticity.

  • we all come from somewhere. each of these places and histories come with their own treasured cultures of peace. we need to draw out these histories and connect with one another in goodwill and shared kinship.

  • we believe that rebuilding trust in each other, and in our communities starts with re-learning to listen and learn from one another—to really try to help people be heard so we can all more clearly understand. are we waiting to say what we want to say in a conversation, or are we listening to the words, the emotions, and the heart of the person in front of us?

  • we believe we need to rebuild our peacebuilding capacity by drawing out our shared deep knowledge. these embodied wisdoms are grounded in our relationships. when our relationships are respected and nurtured, the result can be a positive peace.

What we do

As a systems orchestrator organization intent on working at connecting multi-stakeholder communities and social change, we are actively incorporating backbone infrastructure and collective change efforts across social systems, sectors, and geographies. To build positive peace is to shape new paradigms and imbed infrastructures and cultures of peace by leveraging system-wide resources to navigate complexity effectively.

Peace is only built by systemically-framed and facilitated collective action. Multi-stakeholder participation is key to walking the path of peace.

As a systems orchestrator organization, we:

  • Facilitate peace education and healing-centered peace literacy programs to reconnect individuals with their roots & communities,

  • Build civic engagement spaces and gatherings to reprogram and seed social trust across divisions,

  • Leverage system-wide data and resources to incubate generative grassroots peace solutions.

The 5 Keys

Community Mediation Services

We provide trained mediators from the communities themselves to help resolve the conflicts between the individuals, families, and groups within them.

These conflict resolution processes have been shown to reduce the burden on our court system and provide more restorative, holistic, and satisfactory long-term resolutions.

Peace Education

We pair these mediations with comprehensive peace curriculum taught in high schools, and add additional community workshops on conflict resolution, deep listening, and community discussions that build connection and compassionate communication.

These skills lay the groundwork for preventing future conflicts in communities before they escalate, effectively replacing rising distrust and polarization with trust and connection.

Community Backbone & Gatherings

Oftentimes there is already great work being done in communities by people with passion and deep insight. We help accelerate their work by connecting and facilitating existing social programs and organizations through our backbone organization. We gather and connect resources, strategies, social impacts, and visions across the city, the state, and the country.

Additionally, we host and facilitate events that bring diverse groups together from across the region to foster understanding and cooperation.

These processes ground social cohesion and resilience in our communities.

Grassroots Peace Assessment

We walk alongside communities and nurture peace by also facilitating a grassroots-led participatory action research project, where community members themselves measure the potential peace state of their region.

With over 100 different social impact metrics measured by and for their community, these participants then present their findings to their own families, friends, and neighbors. These same communities can then determine where, when, and how they want to build peace at home.

Peace Project Incubator

The next step toward social change is to provide a platform and a pathway to integrate the newly discovered social change strategies of the local community. So we incubate and resource these local changemakers to tackle the problems they see in their communities.

We facilitate a holistic full-system approach to problem solving; integrating these changemakers into the already existing best practices of the problem-solving infrastructures of their city and region.

These processes gather social capital and direct social momentum into a clear track for grassroots community change.

Our Current Stage

We are currently in our research, development, and multi-stakeholder partnership-building phase. We are piloting initial peace centers in Canada, England, and two more in the U.S. to start. It is imperative to connect and nurture cultures of innovation within infrastructures and cultures of peace as we move to scale for the necessary systems change positive peace requires.

At the heart of this stage of discovery is an ethos of trust, connectivity, and kinship. After all, there is no way to peace, peace is the way.

Contact us

Interested in building peace together?

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