Contribute to a Peacebuilding Culture in the Church This Giving Season
Why should you donate to Peace Catalyst this giving season?
Peacebuilding is underfunded and cost-effective
Crowdfunding is important to sustain peacebuilders and peacebuilding efforts for the long haul
Transforming Church culture toward peacebuilding is a critical need both for Christians and the world
Global challenges like toxic polarization, ongoing violence and war, and climate change are dramatically straining our collective capacity to work together to meet everyone’s needs. Peacebuilding is not just for a few of us; peacebuilding insights and skills are needed to address the everyday challenges we face in our homes and communities, and we need them to work together to address wider societal challenges. Each gift to Peace Catalyst as an organization and to a specific peacebuilder or project is an investment to help shift the culture of the Church to prioritize God’s vision of holistic, just peace.
Peacebuilding is cost-effective & underfunded
The Institute for Economics and Peace found that every dollar invested in peacebuilding “carries a potential $16 reduction in the cost of armed conflict.” However, government funding and popular support for peacebuilding work remain persistently underfunded. The amount of time, energy, and money we must invest to heal relationships before violence spirals may seem significant; yet, it is a lot smaller than the cost if we wait.
Crowdfunding is important to sustain peacebuilders and peacebuilding efforts for the long haul
Peacebuilding isn’t about a few individuals doing all the work to heal widespread harm and social division. It requires everyday people joining in the work to understand, empathize, connect, and collaborate to ensure that everyone feels and is safe, included, and whole. Crowdfunding is not just about raising a salary for staff members or making ends meet for a project budget; crowdfunding is about building a new community. When PCI staff engage in crowdfunding at the outset of their work, they’re doing the hard work to build a connection between PCI as an organization and our wider community so that each of us feel a personal connection and commitment to peace. By building commitment from our wider community, we’re not only diversifying our funding sources but also building our network of collaborators, with whom we can work together to meet community needs, address harm, and work to build bridges to engage in the sacred, healing work of peacebuilding. This sense of community and the wider collaborative network it creates helps to sustain peacebuilders and peacebuilding work for the long haul.
Transformation of Church culture toward peacebuilding is a priority need both for Christians and the world
Contributing to PCI matters because Christians are facing tremendous amounts of conflict, both among themselves and with other groups in our communities. Christians and churches have too often responded to conflict and division with domination or avoidance instead of connection and care. Instead, PCI believes that it is the work of each and every Christian to join in God’s mission to heal harm and establish holistic, just peace. Christians widely recognize that there’s something problematic and un-Christlike at the core of many of our Christian communities. At the same time, non-Christians are often exposed to Christians who are resistant to any recognition of how our communities bear some responsibility for the very sources of division, inequity, and violence in our world today. Both Christians and non-Christians are longing to see the Christian community become more Christlike and engage with divisions, harm, polarization, and violence as partners in healing work.
By contributing to Peace Catalyst International staff, projects, and the organization as a whole, you’re investing in the development of a peacebuilding culture in Christian communities.
Join in. Get involved. Learn more. Recommend people to join staff. Invest in peacebuilding and Peace Catalyst International today.