By way of brief background, Dr. Maya Soetoro-Ng, a peace educator consulting for the Obama Foundation, was director of the Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution at the University of Hawaii. Her brother is former US President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama. But Maya says we can't leave conflict resolution up to governments: resilience will come from ordinary people, not from centralized, powerful institutions or well-tested solutions alone. "It's imperative that we start paying attention to the work that's happening not only in the center of things but also in the periphery," she says. Maya develops peace education curricula in public high schools and for teachers, and is co-founder of Ceeds of Peace, which offers tools and practices for children and adults to develop daily practice in the key "C's" of peacebuilding: critical thinking; courage; compassion; conflict resolution; commitment; collaboration; community-building; and connection.
“When I was in New York [as a young teacher], I noted that a lot of the problems were from a sense of isolation even in a city as thriving and bustling and diverse as New York City. A lot my students, even though they had subway passes that could take them all over the boroughs to many places and anywhere for free, they never really left their 10-block radius because they didn’t feel the outside world beyond their little neighborhood belonged to them, and they didn’t feel they’d be welcome and that sort of thing. And it really kept them hearing and knowing only one story. And it also kept others who might have benefited from knowing them and being connected to them and knowing their story from doing so.
“So I really began to see my job as a social studies teacher to bring the flesh and blood of people’s stories back into the work of teaching rather than having social studies be about memorizing discreet facts to be regurgitated and then forgotten. I really worked with teaching tolerance with New York Historical Society, “Facing History in Ourselves,” to try to remember that history is about learning the depths to which we can plunge and the heights to which we can rise -- and the great complexities of being human. I really drew back upon that childhood not only of my mother, but also the negative things that I saw – whether the inequality of growing up places, where people were not always kind to one another because of economic, or religious, or ethnic differences.
“I started teaching multicultural education like I had previously taught peace education. Then I took the opportunity to teach peacebuilders. The idea was to get young leaders to really see themselves as leaders but also to begin to see the possibilities for transforming their ideas into action for the betterment of the community.
“It was then that I created Ceeds of Peace [along with my co-creator]. We bring together family, community and educators in 360 approach. [We try to] revive sense of connection and shared responsibility – remind people we all have shared stake in future. Share resources in various communities – organizational, human leadership resources, various tools. We get folks co-creating action plans in their communities.”
“Peace within is about building courage, critical thinking. Peace between is about compassion, conflict resolution. … That’s where the c’s come from in Ceeds of Peace.”
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