CONTACT Summer Peacebuilding Program
The Summer Peacebuilding Program includes the following components:
- Two graduate-level courses taught by CONTACT’s international faculty
- Professional trainings and workshops to develop knowledge, skills, and awareness around key concepts in peacebuilding and community development
- Cultural events to share CONTACT’s diverse participant experiences with the local Brattleboro community
CONTACT courses:
Peacebuilding I: Conflict Transformation and Global Relations (2 credits)
This two-week core course serves as a learning laboratory for multicultural community building, self-reflection, and the deepening of relationships with others across differences of experience, culture, and history. Course content focuses on the complex and interrelated causes and dimensions of protracted violent conflict, the recurrent cycles of conflicts, and the steps that lead to healing and reconciliation. This course introduces micro-skills such as the fundamentals of mediation, negotiation, facilitation, and training, as well as strategies for change in places of communal conflict.
Peacebuilding II: Professional Practices in Peacebuilding (1 credit)
This course provides opportunities for students to build on the awareness and skills developed in Peacebuilding I: Conflict Transformation and Global Relations. Participants choose one elective. Recently offered sections include:
- Peacebuilding and Development
Peacebuilding and Development explores the effects of war economies, trade, and globalization on peacebuilding, and provides participants with an opportunity to reflect on and share practical approaches to development and peacebuilding. It examines the interests and needs of various actors in development, as well as the complex web of relationships that need to be developed and sustained if the century ahead is ultimately going to be the start of a Millennium of Peace. - Training Design for Change
Training Design for Change is designed to introduce participants to the concepts and principles of training as related to the process of adult education. It is also applicable to individuals who are experienced trainers and/or consultants. The principles of experiential learning will be stressed in preparation for hands-on practice in training design, training implementation, evaluation, and documentation. Training Design for Change is recommended for individuals interested in becoming trainers; continuing on as trainers; or who, as managers, might find themselves working closely with trainers or consultants. - Leadership and Community Building
The course provides frameworks, skills, and practices to enhance one’s leadership skills, drawing on the instructor’s and participants’ personal experiences, videos, case studies of excellent leadership, small group discussions, and simulation exercises. Throughout this intensive learning experience, participants are exposed to collaborative and inclusive leadership styles that favor shared decision making, open processes, and inclusion of all stakeholders. Collaborative leadership, with its focus on full engagement and collective problem solving, changes the ways communities, organizations, and even political entities operate, resulting in more effective solutions and more engaged populations. Special attention is given to practicing leadership approaches that are appropriate for working with people from diverse backgrounds, utilizing the diversity of CONTACT as a learning laboratory.
Professional Trainings and Workshops:
Some examples of activities and workshops include:
- God Sleeps in Rwanda, presentation and book signing
- Introduction to Drama Therapy training
- Activism for Social Change workshop
- Restorative Justice in Vermont workshop
- Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai, film and discussion
Cultural Events:
- Brattleboro’s annual “Strolling of the Heifers” parade
- Day trip to Boston
- Brattleboro Farmers’ Market and Gallery Walk
- International Festival and variety show
Phone:
877.257.7751, extension 3433
802.258.3433
TTY:
802.258.3388
Fax:
802.258.3320
Mailing Address:
PO Box 676, 1 Kipling Road
Brattleboro, VT 05302 USA