Parents

Despite worries that the COVID-19 pandemic might interfere with the ability of Kindred Credit Union Centre for Peace Advancement participants to continue their peacebuilding efforts, transitioning to a virtual environment jump-started new innovation at established organizations and new peace start-ups alike. This February, The Ripple Effect Education (TREE) introduces a brand new virtual program: The Conflict Toolkit Cohort.

Student engagement is an important part of the Kindred Credit Union Centre for Peace Advancement’s mission to advance expansive and innovative understandings and practices of peace. Even in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, youth have continued to be a resilient, driving force in community change. With an increased willingness to challenge the status quo and keenness to consider fresh perspectives, students have a distinct and important role to play in social innovation.

Positive messages on bridges to assist in suicide prevention. A conference to develop affirming churches. Youth workshops to improve mental health literacy. These are the kinds of lasting impacts that come about through the Peace Innovators Scholarship and Mentoring Program.

How do we prevent nuclear war? Ban autonomous weapons? Champion climate action, or effectively regulate the effects of technology and warfare? Sometimes hard questions are best left alone, and sometimes we need to dig in.

Project Ploughshares is addressing these concerns by choosing dialogue as a method for understanding through cross-country policy labs. To conduct these conversations, Ploughshares is leveraging its passion, perspective and position to create space for Canadians to voice their concerns.

On Monday, December 9, the Centre for Peace Advancement helped kick off Kindred Credit Union’s 12 Days 4 Good social media campaign for 2019. 12 Days 4 Good is engaging partners across Waterloo Region by having each of them to designate a day for an act of good that aligns with one of the central themes of this year’s campaign: affordable housing, climate action, or food security.

Earlier this month, Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA) hosted supporters from all across North America in Tucson, Arizona for their annual convention. MEDA’s work across the globe in sustainable development and international investment attracts a wide range of stakeholders interested in business solutions to poverty.

Katie Gingerich, Founder and Executive Director of The Ripple Effect Education (TREE), shared a heartfelt reflection describing the key moments in her life where she stopped asking, “Who, me?” and began asking “Why not me?” Katie’s reflection was included as part of a month-long fe

What is space security? To most of us, the concept of space itself is foreign, not to mention broader discussions of the security or governance of space. For Jessica West of Project Ploughshares, space security is anything but abstract. In fact, it is a crucial and urgent conversation for the fields of peacebuilding and international policy.

The Kindred Credit Union Centre for Peace Advancement would like to congratulate the Kitchener-Waterloo community on our most vibrant Peace Week yet!

Since our first exhibit in 2014, the Grebel Gallery has been a place to craft, record, map, and perform the stories of peacemaking. It has been a space to inspire new ways of thinking, challenge harmful systems and norms, and catalyze conversations on questions of peace and justice.