Sarah graduated from CJP in 2014, and was the Director for Admissions at CJP from September 2014 to July 2017. She is a trained Victim Outreach Liaison and also certified fitness professional. Sarah is currently pursuing a PhD in restorative justice and public policy at the Diana Unwin Chair in Restorative Justice at Victoria University ...More
The film Paper Tigers documents the journey of a school in Walla Walla, Washington (US), that introduced a trauma-informed approach to discipline and student support in a school environment full of drug abuse, fights, and poor academic performance. In just a few years, they achieved a 90% decrease in suspensions, a 75% decrease in fights, ...More
In our STAR Level I and Level II trainings, we explore the impacts of trauma and resilience on body, brain, beliefs and behavior. We integrate many learning modalities, from embodied exercises to art-making to practice in compassionate listening. In this course we will dig deeply into embodied practices both for the individual practitioner’s well-being and ...More
Doreen’s early life included schooling, becoming a teacher, entering marriage, and giving birth to two sons. In 1998, she lost her husband in the US embassy bombing in Nairobi. In subsequent years, she courageously continued her education, both in terms of participation in survivors’ groups and in formal education – ultimately coming to Eastern Mennonite ...More
Barry Hart and Mikhala Lantz-Simmons will co-facilitate SPI 2016 course Strategies for Trauma-Informed Organizations. With STAR and the Summer Peacebuilding Institute, they are inviting more people, policy and structure into trauma-informing our own SPI at EMU. Following the SPI 2015 course in Strategies for Trauma-Informed Organizations, Barry and Mikhala embarked on a process to apply ...More
At age 20, EMU’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute has directly inspired the creation of 12 other intensive peacebuilding training programs in Africa, Europe, the South Pacific, North America, and Northeast and Southeast Asia, all of which are explored in this issue of Peacebuilder. The training programs operate under the following entities, listed in chronological order of ...More
When Jarem Sawatsky wanted to bring trauma coursework to the Canadian School of Peacebuilding (CSOP), he turned to two experts he knew well: Vernon Jantzi, who had taught Sawatsky when he was a CJP student a dozen years earlier, and fellow CJP alumnus Elaine Zook Barge. As CJP’s lead instructors for Strategies for Trauma Awareness ...More
August 13, 2014 – 11:44 am
In late May, 2014, 35 people from 11 countries gathered on campus to discuss their ongoing work with EMU’s Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) program. It was the first in a new series of practitioner-focused consultations and conferences that will be held each year during the Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI). “We wanted to ...More
August 11, 2014 – 1:12 pm
In recent years, the citizens of Sierra Leone have gathered in village compounds around bonfires, spoken openly of brutalities inflicted on them during their 11 years of civil war, and heard apologies by some of those who did the brutalizing. To the amazement of growing numbers of observers from around the world, the result has been ...More
August 11, 2014 – 12:57 pm
Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton, move over. Ditto for Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. CJP has its own version of a “power couple” – but the two truly represent “power for suffering people.” The man is 38-year-old Ashok Gladston, dean of 23 departments comprising 350 teachers at one of the most prestigious universities in India, ...More
August 11, 2014 – 12:35 pm
Long a pioneer in the field of restorative justice, EMU will become the first in the country to offer restorative justice programs housed within a graduate education program. Beginning this fall, students in the MA in education program will be able to pursue an interdisciplinary concentration in restorative justice in education (RJE) by taking courses ...More