Peace Schools orient faculty, students, and families toward a regenerative culture of peace and justice, integrating knowledge and skills essential for peace and learning. Peace Gardens help children and adults learn to make peace with the natural world as the foundation of a peaceful, just society.
Peace Schools include preschools, primary, secondary, and vocational schools, student organizations, and or community learning groups. Peace Gardens bring the learning outside to gardens developed based on permaculture principles. We collect books, materials, and stories of peace and nonviolence that develop skills, knowledge, and literacy. We teach peace, nonviolence, mediation, and reconciliation to young people, teens, and adults, especially parents, teachers, librarians, farmers, and community volunteers.
Activities and events support human development and reconstitute capabilities eroded by violence and trauma. Literacy and vocation turn people away from violence, and towards peaceful means to ensure survival.
We offer reading time, storytelling, play sessions, and peace camps. We taylor AVP workshops, Power of Goodness events, transformative mediation training, and de-radicalization training to children, teens, and adults. Teen and young adult volunteer networks develop leadership skills and spread the message of peace.
We seek books and materials in each of the developmental stages of reading (Fountas and Pennell), so children develop confidence as a reader. We also support materials and activities for sensorimotor, social and construction skills development necessary for success in literacy and numeracy.
We use permaculture principles and approaches to our sites and programs. We take our work outdoors as much as possible. We learn to care for the plants, animals, and nature, as well as each other. Garden-based learning moves us towards a right relationship with nature. Regenerative farming and gardens provide simple security for climate justice.
