School of Peace

There is nothing much to report from my weekend, it was really low key. Which was nice. Last week I think I saw my host family for a total of something like 2 hours, so it was a good thing that I spent time with them this weekend. I also read the book Blink. It was really interesting, a pretty quick read with lots of fun facts and studies. Blink is pretty psychology based, about how we make decisions and first impressions and such, but I've heard his others (well, maybe just Tipping Point) might be more sociology. I'll have to look into that. When I first got here I started a list to keep track of the books I read--Blink is the 9th book on the list. I have a feeling that list will end up pretty long by the time I leave here...

Enough rambling. What I started out with the intent of writing is that since I have nothing new to report, maybe I'll fill in some holes about my job.

Recently, one of the big things I've been working on is the School of Peace (SOP). This is a program started from ICF (Interfaith Cooperation Forum), one of the organizations Max has started here in Asia. The goal is to bring together people from all different cultures, backgrounds, and regions to break the barriers that often exist between different religions and to cultivate the ideas of reconciliation and peace through addressing root causes of inequality and violence. Gosh, just writing that sounds exhausting! It's only a 3 month school, so it doesn't intend to change everything overnight. But Max is a strong believer in grassroots movements and change coming from the people who directly experience conflict as opposed to being brought in from the outside (like foreign NGO's you might say). All participants in SOP have to be already working for an organization that is active in the community they come from so that they have both a support network and a place to implement the changes they are learning about. One of the objectives is give people the resources to stop supporting a culture of reaction but instead to create paths towards a culture of transformation.

I love that language. Culture of transformation. It just sounds inspiring, doesn't it?!

SOP takes place in India, from February to mid-May. There is only the budget for 20 students and this year we had 30 applicants! I've gotten to do most of the correspondence with the applicants and, now, with the people who will be attending. We have people from Indonesia, Philippines, Nepal, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Bangladesh, all very different regions within the countries and different religions. It is interesting being on this side of a process like this. Them asking me questions about their Visa and passports and various things. Many people haven't travelled out of their country before. But who am I to know!? Most of the time I pass on the question to Max, who then responds to me so that I can respond to them. I feel very "official" sending these emails, except that a lot of times I can't figure out which part of people's names to use. Each language does names so differently! Is this the family name, the first name, the gender identifier? I don't know! I try to copy what they've done, but sometimes it's tricky. Hopefully I haven't horribly offended anyone yet. I have definitely identified those who are the over-eager question askers. I just chuckle when I get another email from them.

I guess that's all really. Just a bit more about what I spend some of my time thinking about.