Dear Friends,  

What does it take to help youth build relationships across our many social divides and to work together to prevent violence?

Peace Education Program has relied on the leadership building skills of the National Coalition Building Institute (NCBI) for our work in supporting diverse leadership in our staff, Board of Directors and networks.

We are honored to host a training March 16-18, 2010 in leadership diversity, with a special emphasis on Youth Violence prevention. We will train a core group of adult leaders, educators and youth workers who will teach these skills to youth and other adults.

There are some basic NCBI leadership principles that aid us in building a leadership team that celebrates diversity as we work to prevent youth violence. What follows are some of the guiding principles of our work at Peace Ed excerpted from  Healing Into Action:  A Leadership Guide For Creating Diverse Communities
by Cherie R. Brown and George J. Mazza:

Every person and every group counts. As a result, our training will address a wide range of diversity issues, including race, ethnicity, gender, social class, age, sexual orientation, religion, disability, job and life circumstance.

To shift attitudes, listen to stories. At the heart of this work is the opportunity to tell and to listen to personal stories of discrimination and mistreatment. These stories have the power to impart a new perspective on the devastating impact of bigotry and violence. Moved by the stories, many people make a renewed commitment to become more effective allies for each other.

Guilt is the glue that holds prejudice in place. Condemning people, shaming them, and making them feel guilty are all unproductive strategies for changing behavior. Guilt is especially useless, because it thrives on our turning inward, focusing on our bad feelings, rather than directing our energies outward, toward the work of becoming an ally.

Under every oppressive comment lies some form of injury. Comments, slurs and jokes are just another way of saying “ouch”. The more we can acquire the skill to listen without blame to an offensive comment as an expression of pain, the more readily we can become agents for change.

Skill training leads to empowerment. It is crucial to have practical skills for taking on prejudicial behavior and oppression. For example, teaching people how they might shift the attitude of someone who has made an oppressive joke, remark, or slur.

Listening does not mean agreement. It means you are willing to suspend judgment for that moment. If we listen carefully to someone who has made an offensive remark, we offer that person space to show – often for the first time even to himself – what the underlying difficulty may be. To understand that bigoted comments have their origin in some form of injury prevents us from giving up when we encounter offensive people. Instead, we can seize the opportunity for effecting change.

Ending oppression also means ending leadership oppression. How many of us have ever had the experience of taking a leadership role only to be “shot down” with the criticism and complaints of others? It is essential that we form teams for dismantling the prejudices and oppression that perpetuate youth violence.

Healing leads to action. Getting attention and support for the ways we get stuck as leaders enables us to take more courageous action in the future.

                                                           
Sincerely, 

Eileen L. Blanton
Executive Director