News

The Kindred Credit Union Centre for Peace Advancement (CPA) sits at the intersection of a number of fields. Peacebuilding, social innovation, and art for social change all find a home in the work of the CPA and our participants. In pursuit of our mission – to advance expansive and innovative understandings and practices of peace locally and globally – we have dug into these intersection points to see what new possibilities might emerge.

Last Tuesday evening, the Kindred Credit Union Centre for Peace Advancement (CPA) was abuzz with University of Waterloo students who had come to hear about how startups in the CPA are using technology for good.

It’s not every day that you find professional peacebuilders, social entrepreneurs, and impact investors gathering to engage in conversation.

Since its inception 40 years ago, the Peace and Conflict Studies Program (PACS) at the University of Waterloo has remained a leader in peace education. Through its innovative approach to learning, the PACS program creates the opportunity for students to express their engagement with peace in diverse and powerful ways.

Tomorrow, September 21, marks the International Day of Peace and World Alzheimer’s Day. Although not typically connected, both peace and Alzheimer’s disease deeply touch the lives of many Canadians. In fact, many of us are grappling with the complexities of both!

EPOCH, the Kindred Credit Union Centre for Peace Advancement’s newest Epp Peace Incubator member, overcame daunting odds to compete for $1 million at the 2017 Hult Prize Global Finals held at the United Nations in New York City on September 16.

From a student design project to solving global issues, the Landmine Boys are changing their name to Demine Robotics. As Richard Yim and co-founder Christian Lee expand their social venture, they continue to work to achieve their mission to create a future without landmines.

As many are aware, World Refugee Day took place this past Tuesday, June 20. On Wednesday, CPA Director, Paul Heidebrecht, wrote a letter to the editor of the Waterloo Region Record reflecting on

the demonstrated potential of this region to innovate solutions to the refugee crisis. Perhaps most significantly, he called readers to continue our innovative legacy, noting the desperate need for more breakthroughs, considering the complexity and scale of the problem.

At the beginning of May, the Kindred Credit Union Centre for Peace Advancement (CPA) welcomed our newest member, Julia Coburn, cofounder of WorldVuze, to our Epp Peace Incubator program. WorldVuze is a free online platform where K-12 students worldwide can safely share and explore a diversity of perspectives on topics posted by classrooms, nonprofit organizations, or experts.

In the Fall of 2017, CPA Director Paul Heidebrecht will once again be teaching a special topics course in Peace and Conflict Studies on Engineering and Peace. Meeting weekly on Wednesday evenings, this course is built on the conviction that the kinds of problems engineers seek to address, and the ways they seek to address them, should matter for anyone interested in advancing peace in the world.

As past students have noted:

"This course put my work as an engineer in context! I think that by taking this course, I grew both as an engineer and as a person."