CRE Global Blog
Now Accepting Applications - International Institute on Peace Education
Posted by Kathleen Doyle on Jan 19, 10
Looking ahead this year - the International Institute on Peace Education (IIPE) will take place on July 12-18, 2010 in Colombia. The theme for the event is: Learning to Read the World from Multiple Perspectives: Peace Education Toward Diversity and Inclusion”. This event is not a conference but a meeting of a “Learning Community” in which the organizers and the participants will work together to nurture a highly interactive, inclusive learning environment. It is an intensive multicultural and cooperative learning experience in which participants learn from and with each other about substantive peace issues and interactive teaching approaches. Program and application information are now available on the IIPE website at:
http://www.i-i-p-e.org/
Darkness and Light in November 2009
Posted by Shawn McElroy on Jan 05, 10
Posted by Shawn McElroy on behalf of Loreta Navarro Castro, Center for peace education, Miriam College, Quezon City, Philippines
My November 2009 began in an upbeat mood. I attended two successive conferences in South Korea in the early part of the month. The first conference focused on promoting interfaith understanding and the need to establish a Peace Education Center that can serve not only Korea but the Asian region as well. The second conference considered various themes (restorative justice, evaluation, conflict resolution education and peace education) and several members of the GPPAC Peace Education Working Group served as resource persons. (GPPAC stands for Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict). The full week in Korea was a happy time for me because both the conferences and the Peace Education Working Group meeting at the end of that week yielded fruitful results.
My hopeful mood continued when I returned to the Philippines. We conducted a Peace Education Training Workshop for Educators in South East Asia. There were 26 participants from seven countries in the region, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar/Burma, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.
Five ministries of education were represented and this augurs well for the future mainstreaming of peace education in the region. However, as the said participants were arriving in the Philippines, a gruesome crime was being committed in the Maguindanao province in the Southern Philippines. At least 57 civilians were massacred in the morning of November 23, an incident that is now etched in our nation’s memory as the most brutal politically motivated violence committed in the country. The massacre truly shocked and saddened us. (I prepared the draft of a Statement which was adopted as the official Miriam College Statement. Please see it below)
As the end of November approached, one thing became clear. The barbaric violence turned into a wake up call or a moment of awakening for the whole nation. There are now countless voices of protest, asking for an end to political warlordism, private armies, and the proliferation or firearms, as well as for the respect of human rights and the rule of law.
I hope that this dark November day would not be in vain. May it yield the kind of light that we seek, so that such an event will not happen again!
Youth & Conflict - A Toolkit For Intervention
Posted by Kathleen Doyle on Dec 10, 09
This informative manual is a document created to bring value to discussions and decisions about development and conflict. It is part of a series that explores how development assistance can address key risk factors associated with conflict and conflict resolution. The objective of the document is to inform about how to integrate best practices in conflict management and mitigation into more traditional development sectors such as agriculture, economic growth, democracy, education and health. This document is helpful because it depicts monitoring and evaluation tools that have been developed specifically for gauging the effectiveness of programs that incorporate both youth and conflict.
Share Your CR Day Experiences and Suggestions!
Posted by Kathleen Doyle on Oct 15, 09
A great way to share your experiences about CR Day this year and make suggestions for CR Day 2010 is to blog! This short (less than 5 minute) video at: http://snipurl.com/creteblogger explains the process of becoming a blogger for the CRETE Project.
By blogging you can share new ideas, valuable information, trade short takes about what works and ultimately enhance the CR Day experience with a Global audience.
While you are blogging, be sure to check out prior posts for up-to-date-information on many interesting topics! Happy Blogging!
Max van der Stoel award 2009 goes to GPPAC organisation!
Posted by Iryna Brunova-Kalisetska on Oct 04, 09
Dear colleagues,
I’m glad to share with you this delightful event. Our Integration and Development Center for Information and Research (IDC) in Simferopol, Crimea, Ukraine has been awarded the Max van der Stoel Award for 2009.
In 2001, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands established an award honouring the former OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities, Mr. Max van der Stoel. The prize is awarded to a person or institution in recognition of extraordinary and outstanding achievements aimed at improving the position of national minorities in the OSCE area. The ceremony will take place on 14th of October 2009 in the Hague.
Research from Australia
Posted by CR Ed on Jul 11, 09
Readers may be interested to know that a number of new research reports on values education work in Australia have been described and linked over in the Researcher’s Blog.
UNESCO Prize for Peace Education
Posted by CR Ed on May 23, 09
Perhaps it is time to start thinking about who should be nominated for the UNESCO Prize for Peace Education? While I think not enough people are aware of it, this prize is an important form of recognition of the critical need for Peace Education in modern society. The prize was first awarded in 1981. Here’s a brief excerpt from UNESCO’s Peace Education Prize page describing the qualities of an acceptable candidate:
Candidates, who shall not be subject to any discrimination whatsoever on the grounds of nationality, religion, race, gender or age, shall have made a significant contribution to alerting public opinion and mobilizing the consciences of humankind in the cause of peace. Candidates shall have distinguished themselves through outstanding action, carried out in accordance with the spirit of UNESCO and the United Nations Charter, extending over several years and confirmed by international public opinion, in the following fields:
- the mobilization of consciences in the cause of peace;
- the implementation, at international or regional level, of programmes of activity designed to strengthen peace education by enlisting the support of public opinion;
- the launching of important activities contributing to the strengthening of peace;
- educational action to promote human rights and international understanding;
- the alerting of public opinion to the problems of peace through the media and other effective channels;
- any other activity recognized as essential to constructing the defences of peace in people’s minds (Rule 3.1 of the General Rules).
The nomination form will be available online as of October/November 2009. For more information, please contact: peace&security@unesco.org
Odessa Regional Mediation Group Educational Projects, Ukraine
Posted by Iryna Brunova-Kalisetska on May 10, 09
Dear colleagues,
Let me, please, continue my presentations of our Western CIS partners in PE/CRE activity.
Main programs of Odessa Regional Group of Mediation (Ukraine) in the Sphere of Education.
by Angela Guseva (ORGM)
http://www.paco.net/~orgm/
Odessa Regional Group of Mediation (ORGM) – is a non-governmental organization that was created for propagation and implementation of mediation and other principles, techniques of Alternative Dispute Resolution in the different spheres of social life. ORGM has been working with education system since 1995.
Basic programmes of the last 3 years.
1. Education and familiarizing of school education specialists with principles of Alternative dispute resolution and restorative justice.
2. Implementation of the restorative justice into educational process.
3. Development of Peer Mediation Programmes.
4. Creation of on-line community of educational specialists who implement restorative justice into upbringing and educational process.
5. Implementation of Conflict Studies courses in higher education curricula.
Cooperative Peace Project in Moldova-Pridnestrovie
Posted by Iryna Brunova-Kalisetska on May 10, 09
Moldova-Pridnestrovie Professional Groups Share on the Conflict
by Corina Simon (PATRIR)
http://www.patrir.ro
Republic of Moldova, a small country situated in Eastern Europe, neighboring Romania and Ukraine, is the site of one of the Black Sea region’s protracted conflicts. A violent conflict in 1992 and the creation of a separate, unrecognized state, called the Transnistrian Moldovan Republic, and the lack of settlement in the issue between the involved parties as well as other specific factors has led to present day status quo in the peace process.
The Cooperative Peace Project in Moldova-Pridnestrovie is a project which started in 2006 with the purpose of building foundational capacity, structures and resources to empower civil society in Moldova-Pridnestrovie to actively engage in peace building and conflict transformation work - to address concrete social issues affecting the people of the region.
Report from Workshop on Peace Education for Educators in Southeast Asia, January 19 to 23, 2009
Posted by Loreta Castro on Apr 16, 09
The Center for Peace Education (CPE) in cooperation with GPPAC-SEA Peace Education Working Group organized the Workshop on Peace Education for Educators in Southeast Asia. Financial support came from CORDAID and GPPAC.
The training sought to: train a core of formal and community educators on the knowledge base, attitudes, and skills that comprise peace education; encourage them to generate doable action plans that they can implement in their schools, organizations and/or communities; encourage them to serve as a beginning core team for the promotion of peace education in their country. The workshop also sought to enable the group to build on the beginnings of a Southeast Asia Peace Education Network that was started in September 2007.
There were 27 participants from 8 Southeast Asian countries: the Philippines, Burma/Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Timor Leste and Vietnam. Two Ministries of Education were represented (Cambodia and the Philippines) and the rest were either educators from the formal school system or from community-based organizations.
The results of a qualitative evaluation questionnaire given at the end of the workshop showed that they have found the workshop helpful. They also indicated many types of significant learnings. The main outputs were doable action plans prepared by the country teams to help build a culture of peace in their respective spheres. Two of the most frequently mentioned plans were: sharing their learnings with other teachers and exerting efforts to integrate the peace ideas, perspectives and values that they acquired into the content of their education programs as well as in their student or youth activities.
Peace education upholds the values of respect for human dignity, nonviolence, socio-economic justice, tolerance and other peace values that are deemed essential toward a sustainable and humane society. Key to the promotion of these values would be the training of those who, in turn, can promote the knowledge among other teachers and community educators. Hence it is deemed important to undertake this type of training regularly until a pool of trained participants can organize themselves as a peace education core group for each of the countries. It is also because of this goal that having a coordinator per country is essential. At the moment this work of coordination is being done by many of the GPPAC-SEA National Initiators or by their designated people, such as in Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia and Timor Leste.
Prepared by: Loreta Castro Chair, Peace Education Working Group GPPAC-SEA
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