Tag: Women peacebuilders

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CSOP Participant Profile – Beverley Stewart

By Ellen Paulley

Beverely Stewart has explored her longstanding interest in peace and justice by taking courses at the Canadian School of Peacebuilding over the last few years.

This year she participated in Women and Peacebuilding, taught by Ouyporn Khuankaew and Ginger Norwood.

“I’ve always liked the idea that this [CSOP] is called peacebuilding,” says Stewart. “The focus of this course has been on ourselves and our own personal being. How do we build peace? How do we become a person of peace within our inner being?”

Instructors Khuankaew and Norwood drew on their Engaged Buddhist roots and their work in Burma, India, Sri Lanka, and Thailand to work with participants to analyze women’s involvement in peace action, research, and education. The course also looked at the challenges that women activists face, such as building common ground among women with varied experiences and concerns.

In the past, Stewart has taken Exploring Indigenous Justice and Healing and Human Rights and Indigenous Legal Traditions. After each course, she shares her learning to some extent with family, friends, and colleagues.

“Each year that I’ve come, I’ve been able to move on and listen and learn in a different way than before the course,” she says. “As the story goes, peacebuilding begins with you.”

A retired Anglican priest, Stewart sees a strong connection between faith and social justice.

“It [social justice] is the faith,” she says. “Faith is all about reconciliation and peace and justice. Those two go together.”

Through her work and now in retirement, Stewart has had opportunities to travel in Central Asia, Africa, Iran, and North Korea, on pilgrimages, classes, and tours. As such, she’s been exposed to a diversity of religions, cultures, and governance models.

“Every [trip] is a piece of the puzzle, and it’s all a part of the web. Each one teaches me something different.”

Stewart is grateful for the opportunities she’s had, which have led her to wonder about the options available to affect positive change in the world.

“How much right do we as a nation, a community, a religious institution—any kind of a we or an I—have to tell somebody else what to do, how to believe and behave?”

While peacebuilding and working for change can feel overwhelming at times, Stewart stresses the importance of drawing on faith to stay motivated.

“Peace groups that haven’t had an element of faith haven’t lasted,” she says. “There’s something about the ground work of an element of faith—whatever that faith might mean to that person. It’s like a tree, you have to have that rootedness in order to survive.”

For those interested in attending CSOP, Stewart encourages them to come. “Having international and interfaith communities is one of the absolute blessings of this place,” she says.

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CSOP Participant Profile – Leda Garcia

by Ellen Paulley

Canadian School of Peacebuilding equips student with tools to work in restorative justice

Leda Garcia says her time at the Canadian School of Peacebuilding (CSOP) equipped her with the tools and knowledge to work effectively in the field of restorative justice.

An institute of Canadian Mennonite University, CSOP is a community of diverse peacebuilders who come together to learn, network, and engage in peacebuilding.

Prior to attending CSOP, Garcia says she had some knowledge of restorative justice, but wasn’t sure of “how to put everything together.” After taking the course “Restorative Justice with Youth and Schools,” Garcia says, “Now I have the tools and I know how to use them.”

Garcia intends to use her restorative justice knowledge in her work at home in Honduras. Working with the Mennonite church, Garcia has been involved in mediation and peace programs in schools.

“We’re trying to tell the kids they don’t have to go through life with a gun, beating people up to make a living,” she says.

Garcia has also worked with a friend to establish a mediation program in the school her friend’s children attended, in response to a wave of violence that was occurring in the school.

She’s passionate about working with youth and encourages them that they don’t have to be involved in a life of violence. “They can change, there is an opportunity,” she says. “They have to work hard but they can make it out.”

Growing up, Garcia didn’t have a strong relationship with her parents and says she had role models who “weren’t the right ones.” As a youth, she says she heard God’s voice call her and felt that she needed to find peace within herself.

“To make peace around you, and to find peace, you have to make peace with yourself; find that forgiveness place,” she says.

Garcia spent one year in Canada as part of Mennonite Central Committee’s International Volunteer Exchange Program. She says she wanted to visit Canada to experience being in a place where there’s “peace all around.”

She was also interested in learning about how concepts of justice vary from place to place. “Justice is always related to the culture, to the community,” she says. “What is justice to you could probably be security and welfare. For us, it could be as simple as having clothing or food for one year.” Once basic needs are met, it’s then possible to pursue other types of justice, says Garcia.

Prior to coming to Canada, she was studying ecotourism in university. But she says her time at CSOP assured her that’s not her path. “My way will be community development,” she says. “I know that feels better in my heart.”

Garcia’s advice to those who are considering coming to CSOP is to not be afraid of stepping outside of their comfort zone and to be open to growing and changing.

“I’ve grown more in this time than I’ve grown in my entire life, in ways that I didn’t know I needed to grow,” she says.

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CSOP Participant Profile – Terry Schalm

by Ellen Paulley

Peacebuilding: Beyond Dealing With War

Terry Schalm, wife of a Lieutenant Colonel in the Royal Canadian Air Force, has learned alternative models of peacemaking while studying at the Canadian School of Peacebuilding (CSOP).

Schalm says that the approaches she’s learned at CSOP have been eye opening and that she’s learned “there are different ways of doing things without using force.” An institute of Canadian Mennonite University, CSOP is a community of diverse peacebuilders who come together to learn, network and engage in peacebuilding.

Schalm, who is also a student at CMU, says her education at CSOP and CMU has expanded her understanding of peacebuilding. “It’s not just preventing violence,” she says. “Peacebuilding is so much more than dealing with war. It’s building communities, building harmony, and seeing value and dignity in everyone.”

While Schalm says she finds value and truth in nonviolent peacebuilding, she says she hasn’t “been converted over yet.” She grapples with whether nonviolent action could be sufficient to “deal with leaderships and attitudes in some countries.”

She also ponders what changes would be required in order for nonviolent peacebuilding to become the norm. She says it will likely take the intentional efforts and substantial cooperation of many people for the world to move in the direction of peacebuilding and wonders whether “we’re committed to continue in a military fashion with our western thinking.”

But the idea that peacebuilding occurs at the local and individual level gives Schalm hope – “it all starts with individuals and moving toward [peacebuilding] and facilitating that growth over time.” She says her time at CSOP has taught her that even actions like compassionate listening can bring about peace.

Hearing other perspectives was a highlight of the CSOP class Schalm took this year, “Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience,” taught by Elaine Zook Barge. “It was really helpful to hear what life is really like for those who have experienced trauma, not just what we imagine or hear in the media,” says Schalm.

In the future, Schalm would like to work in the area of mediation and says what she’s learned during this course will be very applicable. Through her time at CSOP, she’s grown in her awareness that “each person comes with a story and that each person should be entitled to voice their story with respect.”

Because of her husband’s 38 years of service with the RCAF, Schalm says she wasn’t initially sure if she’d be welcomed at CSOP, but comments that the diverse makeup of the School means that everyone is given a voice and is validated. “Instructors seem open to sharing their stories and lives with you and likewise are willing to listen to your story,” she says.

Schalm’s looking forward to talking with her husband about the concepts and approaches she’s learned. And while she might not yet be “converted,” her time at CSOP has “softened my attitude that the military way is the only way,” she says. “Maybe there is hope for people in leadership—that their hearts can be softened too.”

 

 

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CSOP Participant Profile – Marissa Rykiss

by Aaron Epp

‘I’m really grateful … It was a very inspiring time in my life,’ says Marissa Rykiss

For Marissa Rykiss, attending the Canadian School of Peacebuilding was nothing short of life changing.

The 22-year-old Winnipegger enrolled in the course “Women and Peacebuilding” at the 2012 CSOP as part of a B.A. program in Conflict Resolution Studies at Menno Simons College.

Inspired by her mother, who practices collaborative law, Rykiss wanted to pursue a career as an immigration lawyer in order to make a difference in the world by helping vulnerable people.

After finishing the course, Rykiss realized she wanted to help people in a different way. Now, she plans to pursue a Master of Arts degree in Family Therapy.

First though, Rykiss is becoming a certified yoga instructor. She wants to teach yoga and potentially open her own studio.

Rykiss says her interest in teaching yoga stems from her desire to help people develop their self care so that they can be better people and lead more compassionate, empathetic lives.

“After taking [the CSOP] course, I realized there’s so many other ways I can help people, and I don’t necessarily need to have a title like lawyer to do that,” she says. “My happiness, and the happiness of others, is more important to me than having a title like that.”

Ouyporn Khuankaew, a Buddhist feminist peace trainer from Thailand, and Anna Snyder, associate professor of conflict resolution studies at Menno Simons College, taught the course.

Rykiss says it was the way the course was taught that impacted her so greatly.

“Ouyporn had a non-traditional way of teaching where she offered guided meditation at the beginning of each day, and it just allowed us to become a bit more mindful while we were present in the class,” Rykiss says. “She is one of the most inspiring and engaging women I’ve ever met.”

When the course ended, it was emotional for Rykiss.

“I cried on the last day and was so happy that I decided to participate in that particular course,” she says. “It felt like it was meant to be. It made me ask myself why I need to be pursuing something (a career in law) that isn’t consistent with who I am, and helped me understand that where I need to be is in a more transformative pathway—helping people who can’t help themselves get to a place of awareness and mindfulness.

“It wasn’t intended in the curriculum, but that’s just what I got out of it. A lot of people who participated were put off originally by this new way of thinking, but by the end, everyone there had experienced profound change in the way they thought about learning.”

Rykiss’s experience in the course led her to pursue a practicum placement in Thailand with International Women’s Partnership for Peace and Justice (IWP), an organization Khuankaew co-founded.

Rykiss’s work in Thailand included helping with a weeklong workshop for women that IWP organized. Each day began with yoga. While Rykiss had practiced yoga before, it was during this week that she came to fully appreciate the healing nature of yoga therapy.

“I realized … how important it is for people to learn how to be better to themselves, to treat themselves better and come back to themselves through yoga and meditation,” she says.

The practicum and change in career direction would not have happened without Rykiss’s transformative experience at the CSOP.

“I’m really grateful that I was able to take a course where everything could be condensed into five days,” she says. “There are such a variety of courses [at CSOP], and [the organizers] go out of their way to find people to teach the courses who have first-hand experience with the material.

“It was a very inspiring time in my life.”