News

Waterloo is a thriving hotbed of innovation. With tech start-ups emerging daily, there is much focus on business, technology, and entrepreneurship. Adding to this concentration of ideas and change, the MSCU Center for Peace Advancement (CPA) is joining Waterloo’s innovation ecosystem with the launch of the Frank and Helen Epp Peace Incubator.

Between August 10^th and August 14^th, youth in the Waterloo Region will be discovering community through peace. The MSCU Centre for Peace Advancement’s fifth annual Peace Camp is a day camp run at Conrad Grebel University College.

Plans are underway at Conrad Grebel University College to host a Global Mennonite Peacebuilding Conference and Festival on June 9-12, 2016.  In addition to academic papers, workshops, and networking opportunities, the event is intended to be a festival that will include art, drama, and music on the campus of this Canadian Mennonite College.

By Jen Konkle, Conrad Grebel University College

This spring, Waterloo Region elementary school students will be discovering something normal and radical all at once: peace and justice. Peace Camp, a peace education organization at Conrad Grebel University College, will facilitate peace-building and conflict resolution workshops with elementary school students for the third consecutive year. School participation numbers have increased each year, and in May and June alone, 121 classrooms will participate in Peace Camp workshops.

We would like to congratulate and welcome the newly elected Board of Directors for the Waterloo Public Interest and Research Group (WPIRG), a partner to the CPA. This is a new and exciting time as WPIRG says goodbye to the board members who have been supporting their work over the past year, and welcomes the new ones into the fold.

You can learn more about WPIRG, as well as both their new and old board members, in this article.

The New Philanthropy: Foundations in Complex Times is one of the articles highlighted in this month's issue of Engage!, an online magazine published by an affiliate organization of the MSCU Centre for Peace Advancement,  Tamarack: An Institute for Community Engagement. The article focuses on new approaches to social and environmental issues, specifically through collaboration.

In his article, Trading principles: How Canada’s pursuit of military exports has left a trail of secrecy and lax standards, Cesar Jaramillo, Program Officer of Project Ploughshares, offers an overview of the Saudi arms deal. More importantly, however, Jaramillo provides an accessible articulation of why Canada's recent decision to sell Canadian-made armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia is cause for concern.

By: Jen Konkle, Communications Coordinator at Conrad Grebel University College

“Advancing peace requires many hands. It requires shoulders to lean on, and to stand on. It is sustained by the mundane tasks that make daily life possible,” explained Paul Heidebrecht, director of Conrad Grebel University College’s MSCU Centre for Peace Advancement. “Peace becomes possible when we experience genuine community.”

By: Jen Konkle, Communications Coordinator at Conrad Grebel University College