Peacebuilding in an Age of Permanent Crisis

About this training

This training offers guided exchange on what it means to live, organize, protect or build peace in a world shaped by continuous crisis, violence, uncertainty, and institutional fragility. Through participatory reflection and collaborative learning, participants will examine how communities (re)build and sustain trust, dignity and solidarity amid ongoing disruption. Together, we will reflect on resilience, care, hope, resistance, and the practical possibilities for peace protection and building when instability is no longer temporary, but permanent. 

Methodologically, the training draws inspiration from the approaches used in the MIRamiDA Peacebuilding Trainings, one of the oldest living programs of this type in Europe, that was born in the destroyed and divided town of Pakrac in Croatia in 1995.  

Content

This training explores peacebuilding in a time marked by overlapping and continuous threats: wars, authoritarianism, environmental collapse, misuse of advanced technologies, shrinking civic spaces, economic insecurity, polarization, and the normalization of violence. It explores what happens to individuals, communities, and societies when instability becomes permanent rather than temporary.

Through participatory and experiential learning, participants will reflect on the different forms of implicit and explicit violence shaping the present, examine how trust and social cohesion erode under prolonged insecurity, and explore how communities organize, resist, care, and survive when institutions fail. The training will engage questions of nonviolent action, grassroots organizing, dialogue, solidarity, gendered impacts of crisis, militarization, burnout, and sustaining hope.

Participants will reflect on their own role, responsibility, and agency within these realities: how to act ethically and effectively without contributing to further escalation, how to build authentic relationships and collective resilience, and how to imagine and practice forms of positive and nonviolent peace under conditions of ongoing disruption.

Community is not (only) somewhere else, it is going to be present during a week together at the Academy. Through the trainers' approach, variety of tasks, storytelling, exchanges and exercises, a new peacebuilding community is about to emerge out of this training. MIRamiDA's originated by empowering devastated post war communities at Balkans in 1990s to take over responsibility for their present and future. Nonviolent communication and Conflict Transformation were a start, but exercising Cooperation and Trust was a path toward Dealing with Past, prerequisite of violent free future. This training is going to be tailored according to needs and interests of participants, as common group effort of preparation for unstable and unknown times ahead of us all.

Key Concepts

• Role of personal in peacebuilding, authenticity (Lederach)
• Peacebuilding (and Peace work in generally) as Relationship building and Cooperation (Curle, Schirch)
• Differentiating influential concepts: Trust vs Security, Solidarity vs Aid, Dialogue vs Debate
• Understanding threats - caring for life on planet
• Mental health protection & Art as neglected key allies

Learning Objectives

By the end of the training, participants will have:

• Deepened their understanding of how continuous crisis, violence, and institutional fragility affect communities, and peacebuilding processes
• Reflected critically on trust, solidarity, resilience, and nonviolent action under conditions of prolonged instability
• Explored practical and community-based approaches to organizing, dialogue, and sustaining social cohesion during repeated shocks and uncertainty
• Reflected on their own agency, responsibility, limits, and possibilities for ethical action and collective care in times of ongoing disruption

Who can register for the training?

The training is designed for people who feel concerned, troubled, (sometimes) helpless in times described as collapse of international order (which aimed to be) based on respecting Universal declaration of Human Rights. It is for people dedicated to preserve peace (positive, sustainable, for all) where it exists and build it in areas affected by gross violence.

We invite practitioners, teachers, activists, security forces personnel, religious leaders, journalists, politicians and all others whose interest / area of responsibility includes prosperity and safety on communal and societal level.

Prerequisite is willingness for participative, experiential, interactive methodology. Basic peace skills are active listening and asking questions so we encourage people interested to strengthen these qualities to apply.

Training may significantly serve the needs of people working with other people in sensitive, conflicting, (post)traumatic environments and ones interested to learn how to recognize and prevent any forms of violence.

Methodology

The training is interactive (we communicate, work with each other), participatory (everyone is active) and experiential (learning from our experiences). There will be individual work, pairs, groups of three and bigger ones as well as plenary. In these settings we will use creative problem solving, dialogue, presentations, storytelling, art and silence in our work.

We aim to co-create a safe and space where participants feel free to share their perspectives without fear of judgment. Different opinions are welcomed and encouraged, always with mutual respect. We work inside and outside of workshop room. Lecturing and complicated models are not part of the training.

Participants will be invited to contribute in particular sessions according to their expertise.

Each day finishes with one hour in fixed self-facilitated reflection groups. There will be free spaces to reflect on the day, the ongoing process, the group dynamics, on ourselves and for sharing more personal stories so we can get deeper.