International Day of Peace
On September 21st, many millions of people around the world will acknowledge and celebrate the International Day of Peace, also known as Peace Day (http://www.un.org/en/events/peaceday/). The United Nations theme for 2016 is “The Sustainable Development Goals: Building Blocks for Peace.” The General Assembly has declared this as a day devoted to strengthening the ideals of peace, […]
Understanding Policing in Cleveland, from stop-and-frisk to the RNC
We are sharing this an essay written by Hawa Allan, for the Lapham’s Quarterly. Allan, who is a writer of cultural criticism and fiction whose work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Salon, and Transition, among other places. She is Essays Editor at The Offing as well as a graduate of Columbia Law School, where […]
WOVEN’s Elizabeth Howard in The Laconia Daily Sun
WOVEN’s Executive Director, Elizabeth Howard, was recently featured in The Laconia Daily Sun. Her article titled, “Reject Violence, Work to Find Solutions,” is below: The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out. — James Baldwin “Diana Wege is an artist, […]
The Story of Gwendolyn Myers by Search for Common Ground
We wanted to share this story from one of our resources, Search for Common Ground, in the quest for peace in our world: As a child, Gwendolyn Myers begged her father to take her to the airport. Not being wealthy, she’d never seen an airplane. But she’d heard about them. She had to see these things for […]
Learning from Columbine – WOVEN Encourages Action
April 20th is the seventeenth anniversary of the shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. In October, 1998, Diana Wege and Elizabeth Howard founded a nonprofit organization in New Canaan, Connecticut, designed to bring conflict resolution and sensitivity training around the issues of violence to schools in Connecticut. While they initially granted meetings with […]
WOVEN Reacts to Trump’s Apparent Stance on Violence
“To have Donald Trump, a leading presidential candidate, advocate punching someone who opposes his political views is clearly a message in contradiction to WOVEN’s vision of “Peace on Earth.”
The Polished Man Campaign
The New York Center for Children has been chosen as the sole US beneficiary of the Polished Man Campaign. The Polished Man Campaign aims to raise awareness and fundraising by encouraging men to paint one fingernail from October 1st through the 15th. By painting one fingernail, they represent the one in five children who experience […]
It Starts With a Movement!
Take a look at our newest video chronicling our 2014 Reject Violence Campaign.
Books Not Bullets
When sixteen year old Muzon Almellehan fled Syria with her family to the Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan, worrying that her familywould marry her off as a child to a complete stranger was the least of her concerns. Yet shortly after fleeing Syria and resettling with her family at the camp, she noticed a steady decline […]
Gua Africa
He began childhood with an AK-47 in place of a family. He learned to kill his neighbors while children in other countries learned to read. Today, he leads a non-governmental organization, Gua Africa, dedicated to teaching peace, reconciliation, and providing education for South Sudan’s most vulnerable children. Recruited among 12,000 other children to fight in […]
If Peace Had Room to Exist
If peace had the space to exist, what would it look like? I work with a nonprofit organization in Portland, Maine which serves the local refugee, asylee and pending asylum seeker population from Africa and the Middle East. Our team of Community Health Workers (CHWs) serve as advocates and leaders for community members who share […]
Slim Peace
Who knew weight loss groups and peace efforts belonged in the same room? In a New York interview with Salon.com, filmmaker of “A Slim Peace” and founder of the nonprofit born from the film’s success, Slim Peace Group, Yael Luttwak describes her reasons for initiating a women’s-only weight loss group in Jerusalem comprised of Bedouin […]
Blue Marble Dreams
When Rwandan drummer and playwright, Odile Gakire Katese met Jennie Dundas, co-founder and co-owner of Blue Marble Ice Cream at a workshop at the Sundance Institute, her social justice dream was born based on an unlikely product we can all feel pretty good about: ice cream. Odile had a vision to empower her all-women drumming […]
The Malala Fund – Improving Educational Access for Girls
The Malala Fund, founded in honor of one of Pakistan’s most recent heroes, Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani student activist who survived a Taliban assassination attempt in 2012, will work to improve access, quality and safety for girls’ learning environments in the most remote areas of Pakistan. At present, there are 3.8 million girls not attending […]
Vision of Humanity
Ever wonder who’s keeping score for peace? Vision of Humanity, an initiative of the Institute for Economics and Peace. This group churns out a Global Peace Index (GPI), a fairly recent annual report measuring 162 nations’ ‘absence of violence’ and peacefulness. Based on 22 qualitative and quantitative indicators, and presented in a user-friendly, visually appealing way, the Index […]
Julia Bacha of Just Vision
“…Violent resistance and nonviolent resistance share one very important thing in common: they’re both a form of theater, seeking an audience to their cause.” Julia Bacha, Brazilian Filmmaker and Media Director at Just Vision, threw a curveball to a Ted Talk audience in 2011, suggesting that for nonviolence to grow in Palestine, it’ll take more than Palestinians […]