Friends Peace Teams
Friends Peace Teams is a Spirit-led organization working to develop long-term relationships with communities in conflict around the world to create programs for peace building, healing and reconciliation. Website: friendspeaceteams.org.
- Friends Peace Teams April 2024
Friends Peace Teams (FPT) is a Spirit-led organization that creates spaces for truth-telling, dialogue, healing, and nonviolent action for justice in 20 countries. In five regional teams, people of many different faiths, ethnicities, and cultures work together to create enduring cultures of peace. Here are some recent updates from each of them.
The Europe regional team offered Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) workshops to peace workers and psycho-social support to people displaced by war in Ukraine, the North Caucasus, and Iraq.
In five Latin American countries with persistent inequalities and violence, Peacebuilding en las Américas conducted AVP workshops and other activities to support families and individuals in crisis.
In the African Great Lakes region, FPT members offered trauma healing programs for refugees from wars in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The team also supports economic empowerment, women’s health, and education for English literacy and agriculture.
The Asia–West Pacific team recently developed new programs to support displaced persons from Myanmar (Burma) and build eco-justice projects in the Philippines and Korea.
In North America, FPT lifted up Indigenous voices and advocates for land return and healing from genocide, colonization, and forced assimilation, including harms caused by the Quaker Indian boarding schools.
Continue reading → - Friends Peace Teams October 2022
Friends Peace Teams (FPT) is a Spirit-led organization that supports the justice and healing work of local partners in 20 countries where there has been war, colonization, violence, and oppression. FPT creates cultures of peace through developing relationships and holding workshops in the following areas: Alternatives to Violence Project, healing and rebuilding communities, toward right relationship with Indigenous Peoples, and trauma resiliency.
FPT’s efforts to become an antiracist group continue. FPT is discerning ways to empower regional program groups, decentralize power, and deconstruct colonial mindsets. Its council is reidentifying as a North American program group in order to empower regional groups to coordinate as co-equals.
FPT programs uncover the effects of multigenerational trauma, and staff members are beginning a more focused effort to heal themselves and those they serve. The PeaceWays newsletter in November will be dedicated to this subject, highlighting stories from various programs.
Learn more: Friends Peace Teams
Continue reading → - Friends Peace Teams April 2022
Friends Peace Teams is a Quaker organization that includes Quakers from many yearly meetings who support one another in encouraging and developing long-term peace and justice ministries around the world. It also includes global networks of peace and justice workers, supporters, and donors of many cultures and beliefs. Friends Peace Teams’ work supports the peace and justice work of local partners in 20 countries where there has been war, colonization, violence, and oppression. A message of peace comes through developing relationships and holding workshops on the “Alternatives to Violence Project,” “Healing and Rebuilding Our Communities,” “Toward Right Relationship with Native Peoples,” and “Trauma Resiliency.” The efforts of Friends Peace Teams to become an authentically antiracist group have continued this year. They discerned ways to empower regional working groups, decentralize power, and deconstruct colonial mindsets. Their programs uncover the effects of multigenerational trauma and begin a more focused effort to heal team members and those they serve.
Learn more: Friends Peace Teams
Continue reading → - Friends Peace Teams October 2021
Friends Peace Teams (FPT) works among people in more than 20 countries who are choosing to be part of efforts toward a transformed, sustainable world. FPT focuses on building person-to-person relationships in order to create a foundation for grassroots, Spirit-led change for peace and social justice.
FPT continues its peace work through in-person workshops and online. Power of Goodness stories, available on the website in seven languages, aim to inspire hope. Peace Literacy and Peace Libraries help educate youth. Partnering with Friends Women’s Association in Burundi helps educate women about reproductive health and recover from gender-based violence. FPT’s African Great Lakes Initiative programs create safe places in Burundi for neighbors to share stories so they can heal from land conflicts, the main cause of food insecurity.
The next Peaceways issue is due out in October on the theme “Making Peace with the Earth.”
Learn more: Friends Peace Teams
Continue reading → - Friends Peace Teams April 2021
Friends Peace Teams (FPT) works among people in more than 20 countries who are choosing to be part of efforts toward a transformed, sustainable world. FPT focuses on building person-to-person relationships in order to create a foundation for grassroots, Spirit-led change for peace and social justice. The work of FPT, carried out through five initiatives, is to empower and heal, educate and liberate, and act in solidarity for justice.
In 2020 the African Great Lakes Initiative co-sponsored 17 trauma-healing workshops, which, among other outcomes, enabled youth to identify economic opportunities.
As a response to the COVID-19 and hunger pandemics, Peacebuilding en las Américas created the Peace Baskets Project, distributing emergency food, hygiene items, and messages of peace. Over 1,000 families benefited across Central and South America.
The Asia West Pacific Initiative conducted Creating Cultures of Peace workshops, sharing skills, tools, and practices for living in integrity with life’s transforming power.
In the United States, Zoom became an effective way to involve Native and non-Native people in the Toward Right Relationship with Native Peoples workshops.
And the Friendly Book Collaborative evolved to include four projects: Peace Schools and Gardens, Friends Peace Libraries, Literacy for Peace and Justice, and Power of Goodness.
Learn more: Friends Peace Teams
Continue reading → - Friends Peace Teams October 2020
Drawing on extensive Quaker experience, Friends Peace Teams (FPT) is a Spirit-led organization working around the world to develop long-term relationships with communities in conflict, building programs for justice and healing, and creating enduring cultures of peace.
The African Great Lakes initiative hosted the Fifteenth International Training for Healing and Rebuilding Our Community (HROC) in February with participants from six east African countries. HROC began in 2003 responding to the genocide in Rwanda and Burundi.
The Asia West Pacific initiative hosted a “Cultures of Peace” training in January for 46 participants from ten countries in six languages.
The Peacebuilding en las Américas initiative provides tools in nonviolence and community building, partnering with Indigenous communities, women human rights defenders, men in prison, and youth at high-risk of gang recruitment in Latin America.
FPT continues to offer workshops using Power of Goodness, a collection of short stories on peacemaking collected over the past 70 years, to help guide people on their own paths to service.
The Toward Right Relationship with Native Peoples program offers presentations and workshops for faith communities, schools, colleges, and civic organizations in the United States to build relationships with native peoples based on truth, respect, justice, and shared humanity.
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