Courses
2012 Courses
All courses can be taken for training or for undergraduate credit. In addition, Faith, Music & Inter-Ethnic Reconciliation can be taken for graduate credit. All courses run for 5 days, Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM. Participants may apply for only one course each week and may apply for one week or for two weeks.
Watch the video to hear what past participants are saying about the Canadian School of Peacebuilding.
SESSION I: June 18 – 22, 2012
Great Leaders of Peace: Stories of Aboriginal, Canadian & International Leaders
POLS-PCTS-2950 Great Leaders of Peace – Syllabus 2012
Instructor: Ovide Mercredi
POLS/PCTS–2950/3
Take a tour of some of the great leaders of peace with Ovide Mercredi (Manitoba) as your guide. Ovide is the former national Chief of the Assembly of First Nations. He has been honoured with the Order of Manitoba, a nomination for the Gandhi Peace Prize, honorary degrees from three universities and a Social Courage award from the Peace and Justice Studies Association. Drawing on his own experience over the last three decades, Ovide will guide participants into encounters with key peace leaders from across Canada and around the world. As a Cree leader himself, he will engage with participants on key elements of being a leader of peace. Ovide 
Mercredi taught in the 2010 Canadian School of Peacebuilding and we are delighted and honoured to have him teach this course with us in 2012. Click here to see a video of Ovide Mercredi.
Peace Skills Practice
*Peace Skills Practice is now full. Please select one of our other great courses or contact csop@cmu.ca to be placed on a waiting list.
Instructor: Karen Ridd
PCTS–2190/3
PCTS-2190 Peace Skills Practice – Syllabus 2012
Popular in 2010, this course is designed to provide an overview and introduction to working with conflict situations and difficult relational dynamics. Participants are offered a chance to practice and refine foundational resolution skills for working together in the workplace, the community or at home. The instructor, Karen Ridd (Manitoba), is one of Canadian Mennonite University’s own instructors. She is known internationally as a dynamic educator, facilitator and speaker. She has experience in North America, El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Thailand and Cambodia. She is an Associate of Training for Change in Philadelphia. This course is offered in partnership with Resolution Skills Centre and Mediation Services and counts towards the RSC Certificate. Click here to see a video of Karen Ridd.
Speaking Out… And Being Heard — Citizen Advocacy
Instructors: Stuart Clark, Sophia Murphy
IDS/PCTS–3950/3
IDS-PCTS-3950 Speaking Out And Being Heard – Syllabus 2012
How do small groups of citizens or organizations work in such a way that they can influence governmental policy at home and around the world? What characteristics do fruitful policy-change processes share? What can we learn from failed policy-change initiatives? How does a relatively small group have a relatively big influence? How can we support governments to make good decisions? These are just some of the questions that Sophia Murphy (British Columbia) and Stuart Clark (Manitoba) will tackle in this course. Both instructors have decades of experience in working at such issues, especially as it relates to food security. Sophia Murphy is a senior advisor with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade
Policy in Minneapolis. She has degrees from Oxford and the London School of Economics. Stuart Clark has traveled the world as founder of the public policy unit for the Canadian Foodgrains Bank. Stuart will draw on his experience of having led both successful and unsuccessful policy change initiatives. Click here to hear an interview with Stuart Clark.
SESSION II: June 25 – 29, 2012
Participant Driven Processes: Cultivating Change, Respecting Difference
Instructor: Barry Stuart
PCTS –2950/3
PCTS-2950 Participant Driven Processes – Syllabus 2012
Barry Stuart (British Columbia) is internationally known for his work as the first Canadian judge to incorporate circle-sentencing processes into the formal justice process with Aboriginal communities in the Yukon. In this course Barry extends what he has been learning from restorative justice and circle processes over the last 40 years. He will examine how participant driven processes can be used by individuals, communities and organizations to address complex issues while at the same time cultivating sustainable relationships and outcomes. Barry Stuart’s work as a judge, trainer, mediator, negotiator, professor, and consultant has been recognized and honoured across Canada and around the world. We are honoured to have him teach at the 2012 Canadian School of Peacebuilding. Click here to hear a recent interview with Barry Stuart on CBC’s The Current with Anna Maria Tremonti.
Faith, Music and Inter-Ethnic Reconciliation
Instructor: Ivo Marković
BTS/ PCTS–3495/3 and BTS–5314/3
BTS-PCTS-MUSC-3495 Faith, Music & Inter-Ethnic Reconciliation – Undergrad Syllabus 2012
BTS-5314 Faith Music & Inter-Ethnic Reconciliation – Graduate Syllabus 2012
More and more people are recognizing that music can play a key role in interethnic reconciliation. One of the people leading this movement is Ivo Marković (Bosnia and Herzegovina). Ivo Marković, Bosnian Franciscan and theology teacher, was a peace activist during the 1991–1995 war in the Balkans and in postwar reconciliation. Marković formed an interreligious peace choir, Pontanima, which is comprised of people from the different ethnic and religious communities in Sarajevo. Instead of fighting each other, they made music together. While some used religion to incite killing, the choir chose to sing together the symphony of Abrahamic religions. Even as members of his own 
family were killed in the war, Marković worked for a creative peace. In 1998, Marković was awarded Tanenbaum’s prestigious Peacemaker in Action Award for this work. Still active with this famous choir, Marković will engage with participants on the meaning of story.
Women and Peacebuilding
Instructors: Ouyporn Khuankaew, Anna Snyder
PCTS–3242/3
PCTS-3242 Women and Peacebuilding – Syllabus 2012
This course is one of the most requested courses over the history of the Canadian School of Peacebuilding. When asked to offer a course on Women and Peacebuilding, we knew we wanted to involve Anna Snyder (Manitoba), our own faculty member at Canadian Mennonite University’s Menno Simons College. Anna has been teaching, researching and writing about women’s peace organizations, women refugees and peacebuilding, and conflict among peacemakers. This is her area of expertise and passion. Joining her will be Ouyporn Khuankaew (Thailand), a Buddhist, feminist peace trainer who has been working with activists in South and Southeast Asia since 1995. In 2002 Ouyporn co-founded International Women’s Partnership for Peace and Justice (IWP) which runs its own center and works with activists in Burma, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand. This collaboration of instructors will offer participants a rich overview of both theoretical and practical contributions that women have made to peacebuilding around the world. Click here to hear an interview with Anna Snyder.
