Syrians are flooding into neighboring Jordan at the rate of more than 1,000 per night, seeking refuge from a brutal civil war.
Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) has taken steps to supplement its material aid (food, diapers, blankets, school kits, hygiene kits, etc.) with trainings aimed at easing growing tensions, understanding the impact of trauma, and ...More
Six of the women who planned to study at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) in the summer of 2012 in the brand-new Women’s Peacebuilding Leadership Program were unable to enter the United States. So program director Janice Jenner and professors ...More
The new president of Somalia, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, deepened his understanding of building peace in traumatized societies in three classes taken at the 2001 Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI) held at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU).
“We wish the best for you as you work to secure the peace, promote stability, and restore prosperity to the ...More
Leymah Gbowee, one of three recipients jointly awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, carried in the Olympic flag with seven other humanitarians during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.
“It was an amazing experience and honor to join ath ...More
For the second year in a row, college senior James Souder has a summer job that wins him friends from dozens of countries.
They are men and women aged 20 to 90 who do things on behalf of peace and justice like mediate between warring soldiers and live among suffering refugees in camps.
Souder is one of four 1990-born undergraduates at EMU who are “community assistants” in the ...More
Amina Hassan and Samson Sorobit looked at one another across the room at Park View Mennonite Church with a mixture of surprise and recognition. Could it really be?
In 2008, the two had worked together for several months to resolve an armed conflict between rival clans in Mandera, a region in extreme northeastern Kenya along the Somali and Ethiopian ...More
Little more than six months after alumna Leymah Gbowee won the Nobel Peace Prize, Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) has hosted its first participants in a program designed to train more women for leadership roles in peacebuilding.
The first group of students in the ...More
Togar Tarpeh had hardly started school when, in 1989, the civil war in Liberia reached the capital, Monrovia. His family fled the city before he’d finished second grade, and they didn’t know when they’d return.
Because Liberia’s educational system fell apart during the war, Tarpeh spent the rest of what should have been his elementary years working in cassava fields and rice patt ...More
In the eight years since first attending the Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI) at Eastern Mennonite University, Ala Ali, an Iraqi-Kurdish civil society activist and peacebuilder, has put the lessons she learned then to extensive practical use.
Now the program development manager for the Iraqi Al-Amal Association, a development, human rights an ...More
On the week that Bill Goldberg welcomed 67 people from 27 countries to the first session of the 2012 Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI), he pondered the changes he has seen since his arrival at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) 14 years ago.
“Probably 80 percent of the people wh ...More
