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.
Newly appointed Kindred Credit Union Centre for Peace Advancement Research Fellows (From top left, clockwise): Branka Marijan, Brice Balmer, Marlene Epp, Lowell Ewert, Jessica West.
The Kindred Credit Union Centre for Peace Advancement aims to be a dynamic space where peace-oriented innovators and established organizations can come together to make change. In January, 2020, the Centre named five new Research Fellows who are making important contributions to peace research and peacebuilding efforts locally and globally.
The Kindred Credit Union Centre for Peace Advancement’s commitment to thinking differently about social change is the impetus for leading the University of Waterloo’s second foray into the Map the System competition. Student and faculty engagement is up significantly this year as we build on the success of last year’s endeavor.
The Kindred Credit Union Centre for Peace Advancement catalyzes collaboration to move the needle on important peacebuilding issues such as space security, technology, education, and inclusion. Tina Chan, the Centre’s newest Epp Peace Incubator program participant, is adding mental health to the conversation.
As students finish their last exams and assignments, and head home for the holidays, our Centre quiets. In the last days and weeks of this year (and this decade), we have been reflecting on exciting developments in the world of PeaceTech here at the Kindred Credit Union Centre for Peace Advancement during 2019.
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.
As a PeaceTech Peer Leader, I am excited to share what I have learned about inclusion and diversity in the last few weeks.
For those of us who work and study in universities, there are distinct rhythms to each semester, and right now we are entering a time of endings. Classes are wrapping up, major projects are coming due, and exams are looming. Meetings and publication deadlines that some of us have managed to put off are starting to pile up. And, right on cue, the University of Waterloo is providing a dizzying array of opportunities for aspiring entrepreneurs to test and showcase their efforts.
A foundational principle of the Kindred Credit Union Centre for Peace Advancement is that peace is everybody’s business. The Centre has drawn on many different fields and disciplines across the University of Waterloo to catalyze collaboration within the peacebuilding field, and has injected a new energy and interest in advancing peace throughout Waterloo’s innovation ecosystem.