Together with our good friend and colleague Orhan Hadžagić, we’re hosting our first 6-week workshop series in September and October on conflict transformation. Learn more about it, and contact us to bring the workshops to your community.

At Peace Catalyst, we’re working to equip and mobilize Christians for collaborative peacebuilding across lines of difference. In light of today’s hyperdiversity, church decline, and polarization, the need for a holistic, healing-oriented framework at a popular level among local pastors and their congregations has never been greater. With a shalom-centered theological framework and PCI’s peacebuilding toolkits, congregations have the opportunity to both reconstruct their faith in ways that fit with their core faith priorities and values and to collaborate with their diverse neighbors on issues that affect all of society. 

In a world rife with conflict and division, peacebuilding is a felt need in our families, communities, and wider society. Traditional approaches to conflict resolution often focused on political strategies and the most visible leaders, but there’s a growing awareness that sustainable peace requires a more holistic approach that involves everyday people like you and me. One innovative approach that we are leaning into at Peace Catalyst is the idea of a “peacebuilding learning pilgrimage” that includes active local participation. This transformative experience combines groups of foreign and local participants who learn from local peacebuilding practitioners about challenges and successes in their peace work. By including and valuing the voices of local participants, this approach empowers local populations in conflict-affected zones like Bosnia & Herzegovina (BiH) while simultaneously creating a lasting impact on participants from foreign countries.

Over four weeks in the States while visiting family and friends, I was invited to preach or speak at a different church each weekend, in addition to speaking at several Christian small groups. The biggest takeaway that I have is how much American Christians are longing to hear about peacebuilding, and regardless of high levels of skepticism about how peacebuilding functions or whether it can be successful, Christians are interested to learn more and eager to put peacebuilding insights and skills into practice.

Our first ever Trauma-Sensitive Peacebuilding course has officially wrapped up! It deepened participants’ awareness of the reality of trauma in all our lives and the ways in which we can personally experience post-traumatic growth or live with courage in order to help our group move toward healing. Here’s how it went and how you can be involved in future courses.

We're SO pleased to be offering a 5-week course this Fall specifically focused on Trauma-Sensitive Peacebuilding. We've partnered with the Peace Academy in Bosnia and diverse international instructors to provide a high-quality interactive course to equip you to recognize and respond to trauma in your work.