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The Institute for Sustainable Peace works to prevent conflict, connect peacemakers, and reconcile communities.  We know that peace is much more than a feel-good word or vague, idealistic concept.  Peace is a way of living in community with one another that requires hard work, action, and new ways of thinking.

The Institute offers a practical path to peace.  We seek to reconcile and foster dialogue among people of different ethnic groups, nationalities, economic levels, and religions while respecting and promoting diversity.  We educate leaders and give them skills they can put to work immediately to lessen neighborhood tensions, eliminate all forms of prejudice and discrimination, defend human and civil rights, and combat community deterioration. 

Preventing Conflict

Pathways to Trust – Houston With no ethnic majority, Houston represents the future of the United States – a rich and diverse mix of unique cultures and perspectives.  But as diversity transforms neighborhoods, tensions can arise.  These may be tensions between ethnic groups, as new immigrants move into neighborhoods traditionally dominated by one ethnicity.  Or they may be tensions between religions, as people carry historic prejudices with them from conflicts in other parts of the world.  Or they may be tensions between socioeconomic groups, as inner city neighborhoods experience redevelopment and gentrification.   

At the request of Mayor Bill White, the Institute is launching a pilot project in the Alief area.  Our goal is to bring the community together across divides of ethnicity, income, language, and religion and help them address the serious social issues that pervade their neighborhood.  Wrenched apart by poverty, gang violence, youth crime, high dropout rates, and poor public health, Alief is a community in crisis. 

Many in the community want to change the deplorable conditions in their neighborhood, but have not yet found a way to bridge the many cultures that have settled in Alief.  Neighbors draw guns when opening the door to someone of a different ethnic group, not out of hatred, but out of fear.  Homeowners point to apartment dwellers as the source of all the problems.  Language barriers hamper collaboration. 

Until the entire community is able to come together and address the underlying issues causing the violence and other problems, nothing will change.  Adapting a successful urban initiative from Case Western Reserve University, the Institute will provide practical education to community members to help them engage in constructive conflict management, civil discourse, and peace building.  We will focus on helping both the individual and the group develop concrete actions they can take to identify and resolve the challenges they face. 

Initially targeting a large, troubled apartment community, the Institute is partnering with the City of Houston, Texans Together, United Hoods, and other nonprofit providers to ensure that residents have access to services as well as skills.  As residents identify specific, concrete needs in their community, we will help connect them with those who can help meet these needs without delay. 

At the same time, a critical component of the Pathways to Trust project is empowering the community to create solutions themselves, without relying solely on external institutions to make change happen.  A major outcome of Pathways to Trust will be the establishment of a LINC (Leadership Initiative in Networked Community).  LINCs recruit community members from all sectors of society and work to create deep, trusting relationships among their members.  Together, they rapidly prototype initiatives for meeting community needs and emergent priorities. 

Neighborhood residents in the Case Western program took responsibility for their own success, founding and supporting their own organizations, institutions, and events to address conflicts within their community.  For long term change to take root, neighbors must cease to view community problems as issues that someone else – the City, the County, nonprofit organizations – must resolve for them.  Through collaboration, connection, and the ongoing LINC, Alief residents will discover their own power to make change. 

Connecting Peacemakers

Sudanese Diaspora Project  Few places in the world are as full of desperation and violence as Sudan today.  Years of civil war and ruthless genocide have cost hundreds of thousands of lives and have displaced even more.  From the Lost Boys who began arriving in the U.S. almost ten years ago to the small families who have made their way to America from refugee camps, Sudanese refugees have settled across the country in both small communities and urban areas.  Though they may be of different ethnicities and religion, they all share a common experience of violent conflict.   

The Institute’s work with Sudanese communities in the United States began with a talk Randall Butler gave in early 2007 at an anti-genocide conference on the West Coast.  Immediately afterwards, the Institute was contacted by a Sudanese activist who asked if the Institute would be willing to work with leaders of the Sudanese diaspora in the United States.  Scattered across the country and factionalized, Sudanese communities were struggling to address vast needs within the refugee population and back home in Sudan, but were unable to overcome divisions and work together.  The Institute invited a small and diverse group of young Sudanese community leaders to a Leadership Development Workshop held in Colorado in the summer of 2007. 

With their homeland being wrenched apart by violent conflict and genocide between ethnic and religious factions, the Sudanese participants arrived with fears, prejudices, and an initial unwillingness to work with one another.  By the end, they had worked out a vision for a coalition of Sudanese organizations in the United States.  In April of 2008, Randall Butler joined them and a dozen leaders of other Sudanese organizations in Washington, DC to formally create the coalition they envisioned.  A larger group of Sudanese attended the second Leadership Development Workshop held in August, 2008 and continued the peacebuilding process.   

After two years of successfully training and mentoring Sudanese activists in the United States, the Institute for Sustainable Peace has been asked by a major national foundation to expand our project.   

In the U.S., we will continue our work with emerging leaders in the diaspora through a third Leadership Development Workshop.  We will work with up to 36 Sudanese participants to continue to build their leadership, conflict management and peace building capacity.  As before, these participants will come from all regions of Sudan.  By continuing to expand the circle of Sudanese participants, we will deepen our relationships with Sudanese organizations in the U.S., with a focus on those that have interests in on-the-ground projects and transfer of skills in Sudan.  

The Institute will also continue working with Humanity United to evaluate and plan a project in Sudan for young leaders from all sides of the conflict.  Our goals would be to train these young people in conflict resolution skills and give them the opportunity to use them as they reconcile their differences and then begin working together to co-vision and co-create practical initiatives to address the needs of their respective communities.  As they undertake those initiatives, The Institute will connect them to partner organizations that can help them find the resources and the knowledge needed to sustain their initiatives. 

Café Dialogues  Once a month, the Institute hosts a Café Dialogue in collaboration with the community-minded restaurant the breakfast klub.  Each Café Dialogue brings together a cross-section of Houston to discuss a set of questions related to community building and peace.  The event is open to all, and attracts participants of diverse ages, faiths, ethnicities, and backgrounds.  Café Dialogues introduce basic principles of nonviolent communication and cooperative problem solving in a fun social environment.   

We attract a diverse crowd to each Café Dialogue, bringing together a mix of socioeconomic backgrounds, religious beliefs, ethnicities, and ages to address questions about community critical to Houston’s future.  Participants sit in groups of four, all discussing the same question and following rules of communication designed to evoke collective wisdom.  After each question, participants change tables, share with their new group the conversations they just completed, and move on to the next question.  Each successive question takes participants deeper into the issue, and the final question is always about the action each individual can take in the next thirty days to make a difference. 

Café Dialogues serve several purposes.  First and most importantly, they introduce community members who might otherwise never cross paths.  In a nonthreatening, neutral environment, Houstonians have a chance to learn about one another and ask questions that might be uncomfortable in a different setting.  What is Ismailism?  What was it like to grow up as an African American in Houston?   

Second, Cafe Dialogue participants address real issues of community building and diversity.  Participants report that they have taken concrete action steps in the days and weeks following a Café Dialogue to make some needed change they identified during their conversation.   

Finally, Café Dialogues teach people communication skills that they can use in their families, workplaces, houses of worship, and other arenas.  Several participants have asked if they can be trained as Café Dialogue facilitators so that they can host similar events within their own communities to address specific needs and issues.  We will train our first set of community facilitators in February, 2009. 

Peacebuilding Radio Program  In October of 2008, Randall Butler accepted the invitation of activist, former Houston City Council Member and Deputy Chief of Staff for Neighborhoods Ada Edwards to create a peacebuilding radio program to be regularly broadcast as part of her radio show, Dialogue With Ada Edwards.  The live call in peacebuilding program now airs on KROI 92.1 FM on the second Saturday of each month between 8 and 9:30 am.  We are beginning to hear from members of the community that they have heard the program and we have had a number of people come to the Café Dialogues because they gained a new interest in peacebuilding. 

Reconciling Communities

Muslim – Jewish Dialogue Group The Institute facilitates a dialogue between leaders of Houston’s Jewish and Muslim communities in collaboration with Interfaith Ministries of Greater Houston.  Meeting once a month, the group tackles the toughest issues behind the conflict in the Middle East and the impact of that conflict on Houston Jewish-Muslim relations.  Over the two years they have been meeting, members have built a solid foundation of trust among one another and have entered into serious dialogue about some of the most troubling issues facing their communities today.   

On the initiative of the participants, in 2009 we will expand the project to include an additional dialogue group of Jews and Muslims, undertake a series of Café Dialogues involving Christians, Jews and Muslims, and conduct a mock mediation of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. 

These dialogue groups create new levels of understanding between the participants.  But they also have an impact that goes beyond the small group.  For other members of communities in conflict to see that dialogue between both sides is possible encourages additional efforts to reach for dialogue as an alternative to violence.  These groups also foster initiatives that not only deepen the understanding between other members of the two communities, but also propose solutions to some of the intractable problems that exist.  Ultimately, dialogue groups can help a community achieve a critical mass of individuals with a commitment to peacebuilding. 

Renewing Our Minds (ROM)  The Institute for Sustainable Peace partners with the Renewing Our Minds Project (ROM) in southeast Europe to help break the cycle of violence in this volatile region. Each year, the Institute and ROM bring together young adults with leadership potential from across ethnic groups, countries, and religious lines to spend three weeks in Fuzine, Croatia. There, they learn the principles and practices of dialogue and conflict resolution as they address the horrors of war and genocide in their region. 

Since 1999, more than 450 young leaders from Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Croatia, Macedonia, Albania and surrounding countries have participated in the ROM peace gathering. Many of them return home to launch new initiatives to foster greater understanding of religious and ethnic diversity, and to meet the needs of those injured and displaced by war. More than 100 of our graduates now serve in positions of leadership in all sectors of society, including business, government, non-profits, and churches.  

The yearly ROM gathering will continue in 2009. Additionally, the Institute will undertake an evaluation of the ROM program, meeting with former participants and studying the long term impact of the program on them and their communities.  This will also help us formulate a strategy for a new stage of ROM, including new programming in the home cities of participants.