Peace & Security
The Change We Seek
We work toward a world where forging cross-cultural understanding and respect for human dignity can lead to peace and security. Enhanced communications can break down negative stereotypes and can bring people together as neighbors in a common cause of peace and prosperity. New ways of building community can promote tolerance and engagement and motivate those in less fortunate circumstances to consider alternatives to violence and cultivate lasting peace.
Roots of Peace is a humanitarian organization that eliminates landmines, then rehabilitates the land. It’s made a difference in Croatia, Cambodia, Angola and Afghanistan. So far, it has removed more than 100,000 land mines and impacted more than 100,000 farmers working in Afghan provinces to provide alternative agriculture crops, thus tripling the income for farmers. It also raised more than 30 million Pennies for Peace to rebuild schools and soccer fields on de-mined land in Afghanistan.
Institute for Development Studies and Practices (IDSP) Pakistan allows students to become engaged in the social and economic development of their country by providing schools that impart skills for community leadership. So far, 1,200 people graduated from six different types of practice-based courses. Twelve ISDP Senior Fellows (six are women), who had no development experience, have worked on development projects ranging in size up to $1.3 million.
Benetech uses technology and business expertise to solve unmet social needs. Leveraging the intellectual capital and resources of Silicon Valley, it creates solutions in many fields: character-to-voice reading, landmine detection and monitoring software, to name a few. Programs include Bookshare, the world’s largest accessible digital library of scanned material, for the vision disabled and Route 66 Literacy, a web-based program that helps adults learn to read and write.
The Afghan Institute for Learning (AIL) provides education to 235,000 Afghan women and children and has impacted 7 million Afghans through teacher training and workshops on human rights, women’s rights, peace, and leadership.
Search for Common Ground (SFCG) transforms the way the world deals with conflict — away from adversarial approaches and towards collaborative problem solving. It uses media initiatives and partners in government. For example, in 13 African, Middle Eastern, and Asian countries, SFCG produced localized versions of The Team, a soap opera that promotes win-win ways of solving contentious problems. SFCG co-convened a working group of 34 distinguished Americans to make recommendations to the incoming U.S. administration on how to improve relations with the Muslim world. Madeleine Albright was a participant. SFCG also launched a leadership development program for Israeli and Palestinian social entrepreneurs.
PeaceWorks Foundation fosters co-existence between people in the Middle East. Its OneVoice Movement is reframing the conflict to highlight that a majority of Israelis and Palestinians support a two-state solution and oppose violent extremism. OneVoice helped propel politicians to rekindle negotiations in late 2007, after a 7-year hiatus, following the year-long campaign “What Are You Willing to Do to End The Conflict?” that mobilized 650,000 Israelis and Palestinians to demand negotiations.
International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) is an international non-profit organization specializing in the field of transitional justice and helps societies in transition address legacies of massive human rights violations. It also helps build civic trust in state institutions as protectors of human rights.
Ecopeace, or Friends of the Earth Middle East, brings together environmentalists working together from Egypt, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian territories – not exactly areas known for positive collaboration. Yet, FoEME has involved more than 10,000 residents in tours to learn about their crossborder water issues, such as the low levels in the Sea of Galilee and sewage in the Jordan River. FoEME has leveraged an investment of more than $70 million from local governments and donor states in water and sanitation infrastructure.
APOPO trains rats to find landmines and help diagnose tuberculosis (TB) in Africa. APOPO’s HeroRATS have returned 1.3 million square meters of suspected minefields to original populations in Mozambique, impacting more than 50,000 individuals. This African approach is now being copied in Latin America and South East Asia. APOPO’s HeroRATS diagnosed more than 900 TB patients in Tanzania and prevented TB infection in 13,500 healthy people.
Peace Dividend Trust (PDT) helps peace missions operate more efficiently and implements practical approaches to economic development. PDT has offices in five countries. PDT’s Peace Dividend Marketplace project in Afghanistan helped international agencies increase local spending by more than $375 million, creating thousands of jobs. The PDT created the Mission Start-up Field Guide, which is used for all new peacekeeping missions by the United Nations.
