Tag: 2019

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CSOP Participant Profile – Ka Boyet Ongkiko

Ka Boyet Ongkiko

By Nicolien Klassen-Wiebe

Organizational consultant plans to bring learning to Philippines

For Ka Boyet Ongkiko, it was his work in the Philippines that brought him to the Canadian School of Peacebuilding.

Ongkiko, 56, lives in Manila, where he works as a consultant for organizational development. “I try to help make the organization better and more sustainable. So I work on the level of the board, managers, staff, and if the organization wants to go through some changes, I journey with them,” he said.

He works with many organizations, including the Coalition of Leprosy Advocates of the Philippines, God is Able International Foundation, and the Department of Agriculture. He is also a senior consultant at Peacebuilders Community in Mindanao and directs a certificate program in community transformation and leadership at the Asian School of Development and Cross-Cultural Studies. While in North America, he also attended gatherings in Toronto and Seattle and did consulting work in New Jersey.

For his first year at CSOP, Ongkiko took the course, Building Change with Human-Centred Design, taught by Roxy Allen Kioko. Kioko is a consultant in strategic planning and change management who has worked in the United States and abroad, and teaches at Eastern Mennonite University in Virginia.

The class did hands-on, project-based work, interviewing people and working through the Human-Centred Design process, learning how to create strategies and solutions to real-world social change challenges that could apply directly to each individual’s area of interest.

“It’s good. There’s a lot of things that are new to me, but there are also things I already know that have been deepened because of the engagement of people—a lot of perspective shared,” Ongkiko said.

Among the 17 students in the class, there were more than 10 different nationalities, he explained. “We’re really diverse, so you hear a perspective that is not homogenous, you see a variety of exchanges and it’s just nice to listen to one another.”

One of the reasons Ongkiko came to CSOP was because of the conflict in the Philippines and the engagement of peacebuilders there. A treaty, for which he and others were strongly advocating, was signed between the Islamic group and the peoples of the government group in his area. But now the people are asking, “What’s next?” They are entering new territory, working with the government towards implementing the first federal state in the country.

“Definitely what is needed is to sustain the peace, because there are still players outside that are not happy about this . . . plus people are still living in fear, so there has to be concerted effort by all stakeholders to try to make sure peace is sustained.” Ongkiko hopes to design programs that will focus on these issues.

“I’m doing a lot of training and a lot of capacity building with different groups, so I hope to also integrate what I have learned [at CSOP] and the things that I’ve been doing.”

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CSOP Participant Profile – Nicole Ternowesky

Nicole Ternowesky
Nicole Ternowesky

By Nicolien Klassen-Wiebe

CSOP student uses course to enrich youth work

When Nicole Ternowesky first signed up for the Canadian School of Peacebuilding (CSOP), she never imagined it would lead her to a summer job.

Ternowesky, 20, is a third-year student from Brandon, MB, majoring in Peace and Conflict Transformation Studies at Canadian Mennonite University (CMU). After enrolling in a course for the 2019 session of CSOP, she attended a dinner party over Christmas where she happened to meet someone who would be taking the same course at the summer peacebuilding school.

That person was Dwayne Dyck, Executive Director of Westman Youth for Christ (WYFC) in Brandon. Once they made the CSOP connection and started talking, one thing led to another and soon Ternowesky landed the position of Summer Student Mentor at WYFC.

She spent the summer working with youth facing homelessness. WYFC sets up youth with transitional housing in subsidized apartments and helps them apply for Employment and Income Assistance (EIA) to help them pay their rent. Then they create a personal development plan together, working to achieve goals like finishing their high school diploma, getting a job, and improving mental and physical health.

“Basically we just ask them, ‘What do you want to get out of this experience?’ . . . they decide and then we walk alongside them and provide support and friendship. And we try and let them know that no matter what they do, they always have the relationships,” she says. “It’s really fun, like I just hang out with youth all day and get to be their friend and connect with them.”

During her week at CSOP, Ternowesky took the course, Indigenous Perspectives on Salvation, Repentance, Peace, and Justice with Ray Aldred. He is a Cree man who is director of the Indigenous Studies Program at the Vancouver School of Theology and an ordained minister within the Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada.

“I took the class because I am really interested in how Indigenous Christians are following Jesus in their own cultural way and I wanted to learn more about that,” says Ternowesky, who is Métis.

“It’s a really interesting class. I like the idea of incorporating Indigenous ceremonies into Christian worship. I like that he talks about how doing that actually enriches Christianity, because a lot of people are scared it threatens the integrity of the gospel, but actually it enriches our encounter with Christ.”

She appreciates how he invited everyone in the class into an Indigenous spirituality, even though many were not Indigenous, and encouraged people to experience Jesus in a new way. “Because as Indigenous people, the ceremonies and practices that we have are gifts, you know? We should be sharing them with people,” she says.

Ternowesky was excited to share what she learned with the youth at WYFC. “We have really deep faith conversations a lot of the time, so I’m really excited to bring what I’m learning back to them, because a lot of them are Indigenous,” she says. “I feel like it would be cool to help them be proud of who they are and make sure they know they don’t have to be one or the other, Christian or Indigenous—they can be both . . . now I feel like I’ll be better equipped to have that conversation.”

Changes to the 2020 Canadian School of Peacebuilding courses and schedule

Due to the ongoing travel restrictions and social distancing directives in place across North America in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, CMU’s Canadian School of Peacebuilding (CSOP) is announcing the following changes to its June 2020 courses.

The following three courses will be offered in online format only:

  • Leading in an Age of Polarization, with David Brubaker (Eastern Mennonite University). 
  • Does Religion Cause Violence, with William Cavanaugh (DePaul University)
  • Reconciling Stories: Indigenous Laws and Lands, with Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair (University of Manitoba) REVISED COURSE – this course may be of interest to participants originally registered for Indigenous Politics, Land and Globalization (Rauna Kuokkanen) and Dreaming of Kanata and Canada (Niigaan Sinclair).

The following four courses are cancelled:

  • Indigenous Politics, Land, and Globalization, with Rauna Kuokkanen
  • Active Bystander Training, with Joy Meeker
  • Trauma, Healing, and Reconciliation, with Kelly Bernardin-Dvorak
  • Dreaming of Kanata and Canada: Indigenous Graphic Novels and Reconciliation, with Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair

For more information please see the news release about changes to CSOP 2020.

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CSOP Participant Profile – S.M. Islam

By Nicolien Klassen-Wiebe

From injustice to peace

CEO of human rights organization brings CSOP learning home

When S.M. Rafiqul Islam received an email from the Canadian School of Peacebuilding (CSOP) advertising their 2019 program, he signed up for not one, but two courses.

Islam, 47, is from Bangladesh, where he is CEO of the Rural Mother and Child Health Care Society, a non-governmental, non-profit organization. Despite the name, the work of the 27-year-old organization is not limited to women and children. It works in all the major sectors of development in Bangladesh, including health, education, human rights, global peace, emergency response, and climate change.

They are also an accredited partner of the United Nations (UN), working to implement the UN agenda wherever they are able. “We’re working to make the globe a safer place for the next generation,” he said.

At his first week of CSOP, Islam took Peace Skills Practice with Natasha Mohammed, a community counsellor, mediator, and victim impact worker who has taught for almost two decades. “I learned a lot of things, because our course instruction is very fantastic and she has a lot of experience,” he said. “What I learn from her I can use in my practical life, in my personal life, in my community, among my office and my staff, in my program’s division.” He said he’ll be able to take his experiences at CSOP and use them as he trains others in peacebuilding and development work back home.

During his second week, he took Justice, Peacebuilding, and a Theology of Struggle with Dann Pantoja and Gordon Zerbe. Pantoja has worked as a pastor and started a peacebuilding institute with his wife in the Philippines, where he is a Mennonite Church Canada witness worker. Zerbe is a Professor of New Testament at Canadian Mennonite University and has taught and worked in the Philippines with Mennonite Central Committee.

Islam explained that violence is pervasive in his country, both at home and in the workplace. “In Bangladesh there is a great lack of peace . . . the peace in Bangladesh, it is an emergency.” He added that the government focusses only on development and not social justice, but that “without peacebuilding, no development is meaningful.” This is why peacebuilding and leadership training is so important.

He’s working on bringing this message to the 12,000 volunteers and 3,500 staff within his organization, many of whom are women and youth. “If we practice and send volunteers place to place, and they’re connecting the social leaders, political leaders, and community leaders, and counselling them about making peace, then I think that it could be good for the future.”

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CSOP Participant Profile – Ha Na Park

By Nicolien Klassen-Wiebe

“This school certainly builds a peacebuilder”

Minister inspired by the transformation CSOP created in herself and others

Ha Na Park enrolled in the Canadian School of Peacebuilding (CSOP) when she witnessed firsthand the transformative impact it can have on people’s lives.

Park, 39, migrated from Korea to Canada in 2007 and now calls Winnipeg home. She is an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada and currently serves as the minister at Immanuel United Church in Winnipeg, where she has worked for the last two years.

Her partner took a few CSOP courses in recent years, and she watched as every morning he got excited to go to class. “In the last course he took at CSOP, I saw real transformation,” she says. “He was challenged by the instructor when he asked a question and he really took the challenge seriously. I could see that challenge began to shift something . . . I could really see the change at home and in other things and relationships.”

He became more attentive and dedicated to dismantling his own patriarchal actions. She thought, “This school certainly builds a peacebuilder! I became very convinced that something great happens here.” She registered herself almost immediately.

For her first class at CSOP, Park took Trauma, Peacebuilding, and Resilience – Level 1, taught by Vicki Enns, Clinical Director of the Crisis & Trauma Resource Institute, and Wendy Kroeker, Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Transformation Studies at Canadian Mennonite University (CMU).

Park says she appreciated the diversity amongst the participants and how inclusive the environment was. “I have been so delighted to see how [the instructors] were so willing and able to really create this space for everyone to participate with truth and being fully themselves. Everyone has been encouraged to express their thoughts and questions without hesitance,” she says. “And the subject is exceptionally important and unique, linking the individual psychological trauma healing with justice aspects of peacebuilding.”

Park sees many ways in which she can apply the new knowledge she learned at CSOP in her faith context and is interested in learning more about how this kind of work is taking place outside the church. “I really hope that my learning from the course can change me and inform me in the lens of trauma so that I can more properly listen and share stories with everyone,” she says.

She is also absorbing her learning in a personal way. “I began to see my own lived experience through the lens of trauma, even though I don’t consider my life events as more classic trauma events. But for example, patriarchy can be slow, systemic trauma for some people. So I’m really taking this learning . . . to see where I am and it has been helping me in the process of healing too.”

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CSOP Participant Profile – Bob Gilbert

By Nicolien Klassen-Wiebe

Minister uses CSOP knowledge to resource church community

Bob Gilbert has been a minister in Manitoba for 24 years, and for the last several of those, the Canadian School of Peacebuilding (CSOP) has played an important role in equipping him to serve his community.

Gilbert, 66, is the minister at Augustine United Church in Winnipeg, where he has served for the last seven years. It is an inclusive, affirming church that is active in seeking justice in its community and the world. He takes classes at CSOP as part of the continuing education opportunity his job provides him.

This year, his fourth time attending CSOP, he took Generous Dissent: Nonviolent Activism and Resistance with Dr. Emily Welty, member of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and director of Peace and Justice Studies at Pace University in New York City.

“It’s great,” Gilbert says of his class. “Not only is the topic fascinating, but the readings she’s chosen are also interesting. She’s a really good teacher, conveying her topic with passion. She uses all different kinds of modalities and engages us.”

He first heard about CSOP from members of his church, some of whom had attended in the past. Now he’s bringing his learning back to that community. He took a course on Indigenous-settler relations, titled Reconciling Our Future: Stories of Kanata and Canada, with Dr. Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair a few years ago. As a class, with the guidance of Sinclair, they came to the conclusion that education and getting to know people face to face were key ways to proceed as settlers.

“That inspired me to take the invitation to have circles for reconciliation at our church, which is a grassroots movement which brings together Indigenous people and settlers,” Gilbert says. “They meet once a week for 10 weeks in a circle, and talk about issues that…stem from colonial policies and attitudes. A lot of our church people attend and have come to a very different place in their lives.”

Another of his courses motivated him to give a workshop on the Mennonite Church Canada resource, Wrongs to Rights: How Churches can Engage the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, at his church during Lent. “I come here partly for my own nurture and refreshment, but I also do it for what I can bring back to my faith community and my daily work with them.”

Gilbert is part of the Just Living group hosted by Augustine United Church, which meets monthly and is open to anyone, whether religious or not. They gather for fellowship and discuss different subjects, sometimes bringing in guest speakers. Two other participants from the group also took Dr. Welty’s course with Gilbert and together they plan to bring back their learning to the Just Living group, as well as the broader church.

“I’ve been really thinking that Christians need to begin to think seriously about non-violent action. That’s been on my mind for quite a while…climate change, some of the things that are happening in the world right now, if we’re going to affect change, this is the most effective way to do it. Not all of us are called to do it, but I’m hoping to excite and educate folks about what that would entail…going further than just petitions and letters and taking some risks.”

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CSOP Participant Profile – Zina Hamu

By Nicolien Klassen-Wiebe

Yazidi student finds hope in sharing stories at CSOP

When Zina Hamu entered the classroom for Trauma, Peacebuilding, and Resilience – Level 1, the course she was taking at the Canadian School of Peacebuilding (CSOP) last June, she walked in with a very personal perspective.

Hamu, 23, is a survivor of the Yazidi genocide in northern Iraq.

She was in her last year of high school, hanging out with her friends and making goals for her future, hoping to be a pediatrician. Then in August of 2014, ISIS attacked her village. While their homes burned and people were being killed and abducted, she fled with her family and neighbours to the mountains. It took two days to get to safety, walking in 40-degree heat with no water or food. After almost two weeks, they arrived in a refugee camp, where she discovered that few people in her village had survived. More than five years later, people are still living in refugee camps, including her family.

In addition to the course on trauma, taught by Vicki Enns, Clinical Director of the Crisis & Trauma Resource Institute, and Wendy Kroeker, Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Transformation Studies at Canadian Mennonite University (CMU), Hamu also took Making Music, War, and Peace with Dr. Svanibor Pettan, internationally renowned lecturer, researcher, and chair of the ethnomusicology program at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

While taking the first course, Hamu said, “It’s kind of heavy because it’s about trauma, but at the same time it’s very interesting, because we in the class, we international people, share our different stories and learn from each other. I’m also happy to share my story with them, and so we all can learn from each other.”

In the refugee camp, which held more than 3,500 families, she worked with women and children at a health centre and kindergarten. She was also a photographer, capturing not only the struggles of living in the camp, but also the rich tradition and culture of her Yazidi people.

She was told she could still take the final exams to graduate high school, but she didn’t see how she could possibly pass because she had no books. “There was nothing in my head but trauma. I felt like I was dead and there was nothing good left in life for us.” But the exams came, and she passed them all.

In 2017, she had the opportunity to go to LCC International University in Lithuania. It was at a photo exhibition put on by the university that she met Cheryl Pauls, President of CMU. Hamu received a scholarship to study at CMU as a war-affected student and is now in her second year of studying International Development Studies, wanting to help people who are suffering around the world and back home. “I get the chance to study here. I’m very grateful for it.”

It was in her classes that she heard about CSOP. She was intrigued, but it was only when she was immersed in the environment that she realized what she would gain from it. “Every person’s stories … they gave me a lesson to learn from it and apply to my life and other’s lives too. I’m very inspired about the knowledge they bring in the class and they are willing to build peace. Some of them talk about their projects they do to help the people and the work they do, so I think I can learn from their experiences and I can do something for my people, too.”

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CSOP Participant Profile – Yousuf Abdulaziz

By Nicolien Klassen-Wiebe

International human rights worker finds professional development at CSOP

Yousuf Abdulaziz is no stranger to peacebuilding and human rights work. He has worked for the International Committee of the Red Cross, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), and Save the Children in the Central African Republic.

Abdulaziz, 42, is originally from Sudan but moved to Egypt with his family. He now works with Save the Children in Iraq, leading the child protection program in the whole country. His program does everything from monitoring and reporting child rights abuses, psycho-social rehabilitation for children, and reunification with families.

But as he has worked in human rights, he has found that short-term emergency responses aren’t enough to help in the long-term picture. When he heard about the Canadian School of Peacebuilding (CSOP) from a friend, he knew he had to take a course.

Abdulaziz took Peace Skills Practice with Natasha Mohammed, a community counsellor, mediator, and victim impact worker who has taught for almost two decades.

At first, he wasn’t sure if he was going to learn anything new, because many concepts in the first class were familiar. But by the next day, he knew he was wrong. For the rest of the week, he was learning new idea after new idea.

“Most people who work in areas of armed conflict like me, when we say peacebuilding and conflict resolution we are always thinking of armed conflict and people who are fighting,” says Abdulaziz. “But when I came here I discovered that it’s not only about that.” He learned that conflict can also be in your own personal life, between family and friends, and is affected by social and cultural elements.

“It’s amazing,” he says of the course. Around 75 percent of the material has a direct connection with his work. He especially appreciated when the course discussed social programming, because that’s currently part of the program Save the Children is running for children in Iraq, whether it’s spaces for kids to draw and play or programs for parents about positive parenting and discipline led by community facilitators.

During the week of the course, Abdulaziz had already started sharing his learning with his team in Iraq. “Now it’s not only a personal gain, but also I feel like the organization itself is going to gain from this course at CSOP.”

“I was telling myself really I’m regretting not attending this course before,” he says. “Can you imagine if I had this three or four years ago? It might make a lot of change in my life and in my career, which will of course have a positive impact on children in the areas where I’m working.”

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CSOP Participant Profile – Brooke Nagle and Lenora Yarkie

By Nicolien Klassen-Wiebe

A community of change-makers

Connecting with peacebuilders at CSOP empowering and inspiring

Before Brooke Nagle and Lenora Yarkie were even finished their 2019 Canadian School of Peacebuilding (CSOP) courses, they had already chosen their course for next year’s session.

“This is our third year at CSOP,” says Nagle. “I’ve gotten a lot out of these courses. I find they’re really thought provoking and useful in the volunteer work that I do.”

The two women met in El Salvador while volunteering as election observers for the presidential election in 2014. Yarkie, 69, from Alberta, was doing human rights work on Canadian mining in El Salvador with the United Church of Canada. Nagle, 63, from California, was working in the country with the organization Center for Interchange and Solidarity, which runs schools, clean water projects, and provides scholarships for students.

Now, years later, CSOP is an opportunity for the friends to reconnect every year. Although they keep in touch and sometimes see each other at the border of Arizona and Mexico, where they live with a group of Catholic nuns and do volunteer work with migrants, Yarkie says, “CSOP is a special time.”

This year, she took Peace Skills Practice with Natasha Mohammed, a community counsellor, mediator, and victim impact worker who has taught for almost two decades. Nagle took Making Music, War, and Peace with Dr. Svanibor Pettan, internationally renowned lecturer, researcher, and chair of the ethnomusicology program at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Not only is CSOP a chance to take fascinating courses and catch up with old friends; it’s also a place to form new relationships. “The ability to meet other students, both Canadian and international, who are struggling with some of the same issues in their own countries and hearing their experiences, I think this is huge,” says Yarkie.

Last year, Nagle and her husband travelled to Bangladesh after being invited by a Bangladeshi judge whom they had met at CSOP the previous year. “The people have been very interesting, very inspirational, from around the world. I find it a very impressive program,” she says.

Yarkie emphasizes how meaningful it is to meet people who are on the same page as you and who really understand what you’re talking about, even if you’ve never met before and are from opposite sides of the world.

“You always meet somebody here who is either interested in the international work you’re doing or who has done the same thing,” she says. Sometimes they’ve worked or visited more recently and can provide an update on the situation. “There’s a connection there and there’s a shared learning. This is what I really love.”

The way the world is these days, it’s comforting and empowering to be around people that can relate and are doing similar work, Nagle says. “There’s power in that sense of unity.” “You don’t feel like you’re alone in doing this sort of stuff,” Yarkie agrees.

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Resources

Strangers in This World: Multireligious Reflections on Immigration

By Hussam S. Timani (Author, Editor), Allen G. Jorgenson (Editor), Alexander Y. Hwang (Editor)

With a chapter by Ray Aldred

Immigration is one of the most hotly debated topics today. But, the question involves more than politics and emotion; it includes such critical issues as law, justice, human rights, human dignity, and freedom. Strangers in This World is a collection that brings together an international consortium of scholars to reflect on the religious, political, anthropological, and social realities of immigration through the prism of the historical and theological resources, insights, and practices across an array of religious traditions. The volume, reflecting the diversity of religious cultures, is nevertheless unified in arguing that immigration is an important aspect of the major religions and is found at their core. The contributors unfold this important dimension of the religious traditions and explore the ways that the theme of immigration connects to vital points of theological reflection and practice in Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Native American religious traditions. At root, the volume is about our collective journey together as immigrant peoples who have stories and settlements to share, as well as challenges and struggles to overcome, that may be faced through the resources our many faiths offer.

https://www.amazon.com/Strangers-This-World-Multireligious-Reflections/dp/1451472978

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The Oxford Handbook of Applied Ethnomusicology

By Svanibor Pettan (Editor) and Jeff Todd Titon (Editor)

Applied studies scholarship has triggered a not-so-quiet revolution in the discipline of ethnomusicology. The current generation of applied ethnomusicologists has moved toward participatory action research, involving themselves in musical communities and working directly on their behalf.

The essays in The Oxford Handbook of Applied Ethnomusicology, edited by Svanibor Pettan and Jeff Todd Titon, theorize applied ethnomusicology, offer histories, and detail practical examples with the goal of stimulating further development in the field. The essays in the book, all newly commissioned for the volume, reflect scholarship and data gleaned from eleven countries by over twenty contributors. Themes and locations of the research discussed encompass all world continents. The authors present case studies encompassing multiple places; other that discuss circumstances within a geopolitical unit, either near or far. Many of the authors consider marginalized peoples and communities; others argue for participatory action research. All are united in their interest in overarching themes such as conflict, education, archives, and the status of indigenous peoples and immigrants.

A volume that at once defines its field, advances it, and even acts as a large-scale applied ethnomusicology project in the way it connects ideas and methodology, The Oxford Handbook of Applied Ethnomusicology is a seminal contribution to the study of ethnomusicology, theoretical and applied.

https://www.amazon.ca/Oxford-Handbook-Applied-Ethnomusicology/dp/0199351708/