Additional Efforts

New Projects and Events Currently Under Development
and Those Being Planned

    Projects

"Engaging The Other": edited book on The Other, in conjunction with our new international conference on "Engaging The Other." The book will include contributions by authors representing a diversity of cultures & societies around the world to explore this fundamentally subjective phenomenon with a multicultural eye. (The book is based on a contributed chapter by CBI's director on this topic, titled "Psychological Concepts of The Other," for a book published by Preager/Greenwood publishers: "The Psychology of Terrorism").

"Engaging The Other" training program, in conjunction with the conference on Engaging The Other. The training program will be intended to promote increased public awareness and sensitivity to the dynamics of negative stereotyping, prejudice, and fear based belief systems, and geared to the lay public (schools, community centers, universities, etc.). Through utilizing a diverse, multicultural pool of collaborators and consultants, the goal is to create a program that is adapatable and that can be tailored to be culturally sensitive and appropriate. In addition to being generally applicable in many settings, ideally it would be conducted in and near regions of conflict. Among individuals targeted to become trainers in communities will be human service professionals, including psychologists, social workers, educators, community leaders and activists, with the intent to develop sensitivity training and awareness raising programs/curriculum for schools and universities, community organizations, church congregations, government workers, political groups, etc.
Public education: Concepts can also be introduced to the general public in various "pop psychology" formats through the media to "generic" the process within the general population and increase wider public awareness, sensitivity, and understanding.

Children's Trauma Treatment Center:  A project to create a children's trauma treatment center in Nablus, West Bank, including providing training and consultation to treatment staff, treatment programs and methodology, clinical and professional resources, organizational infrastructure, and initial seed funding to operate for the 1st year. At this stage, the above elements have been prepared, including a physical site at a local pediatric center in Nablus that has been pledged as the 1st site of this trauma center, and we are seeking operating funds for the direct services. Currently there is no such trauma treatment service available, particularly for children, in the Nablus region.

Joint Palestinian/Israeli Trauma Treatment Training: An innovative joint Palestinian/Israeli trauma treatment training for therapists from Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel. This project is intended to provide opportunities to learn and share trauma treatment skills, and the unique possibility for therapists from both sides of the conflict to work directly in assisting each other in gaining skills to heal their respective communities.

Iraqi Trauma Treatment Training: A project to provide training, professional resources, and the organizational infrastructure to a team of Iraqi counselors to staff a trauma treatment center in Iraq. To date a physical site in Baghdad has been secured for a 1st treatment center, contingent on our providing trained counselors to staff it and an overall operating plan for at least one year.

Joint Palestinian / Israeli Peace Studies Center Network
A project being explored between the universities involved in our Capacity For Peace and Democracy project and universities in Israel. The hope is to work toward including additional local academic institutions to promote more direct dialogue, interaction, and eventually cooperation, including the possibility of co-sponsoring one of our "Engaging The OTHER" conferences as a regional conference.

Joint Palestinian / Israeli Youth Encounters.
Collaborating with local youth programs in Palestine and Israel to operate personal encounters between Palestinian and Israeli youth to counter negative stereotypes and prejudices among youth from both societies and to nurture common bonds.

A Cooperative Publishing vehicle (including E-Publishing) for voices of hope and reason - individuals from around the world with important, cutting edge ideas to stimulate and contribute to the public dialogue. To support our overall goal of nurturing individual capacity for peace, this service is intended to help promote the insights and wisdom of visionaries for peace and healing on an international, cross-cultural level, and to offer practical hope through raising public awareness of the wealth of viable efforts and visions of the possible that are at work in the world. In the current state of publishing, many good ideas never see the light of day because of the commercial or ideological criteria of many publishers, as well as the financial capacity of many throughout the world doing truly soulful and inspiring work that is all part of the emerging consciousness of peace that is literally occurring around us each day. Too often this crucial work takes place under the radar of the general public, and even clouded from public consciousness by an alternative world-view that dysfunctionally perpetuates a diminishing value of human potential and an ethos of self-destruction, despair, and impotence.
Instilling genuine and realistic hope in the general public based on simply knowing the facts is seen as an essential part of achieving a consciousness of peace and healing, and in empowering each individual with the capacity to add their necessary energy and support, locally and globally, to the making the vision a reality.

Facilitated Encounter Group Dialogues: An initiative to offer facilitated informal meetings between representatives of opposing sides of existing conflicts to provide personal interaction and experience with "the Other" to increase understanding, empathy, and trust, and to contradict negative stereotypes, leading to exploring new avenues for solutions. Based on the landmark international peace work of Carl Rogers conducted in N. Ireland, S. Africa, Central America, and the Former Soviet Union.

Professional Schools and Practical Training Programs In Human Services: Assisting the establishment and development of locally based professional schools and practical training programs in human services to assist in forming core mentor groups in post-communist and developing countries.

Student / Faculty Exchange In Special Education, between special education departments of U.S. universities and universities in developing countries that are regions of conflict to assist in raising the level of services for children with special needs, and to address negative effects of turmoil at all levels of society on children.

Expanding our Website as an interactive vehicle for virtual community, collaboration, education, follow-up to training, and exploratory dialogue. Our redesigned website is currently in the process of being developed toward these ends. Among the features that will be available in the very near future:

• Journal of Conflict Transformation, a virtual journal of collected papers from our conferences and trainings
  
  
• "Connections," a CBI E-newsletter that - in addition to reporting on the activities of CBI, our network, and alumni - provides a virtual forum to share learning and offer contributed opinion articles and editorials on important issues and current conditions in the world.
  
  
• A Virtual Resource Library, of programs & curriculums from our annual conferences and training projects, as well as reference and training materials from many sources, including publications (books, journals, articles, etc.), videos, audio, graphics and photos, etc. This will be continually added to both through loading materials on our web site and providing easily targeted links to specific materials on other sites by developing a reciprocal and cohesive information net with various collaborating organizations and universities internationally.
  This information will be made available to all to help instill the most people with the most knowledge, information, and skills to help increase capacity for peace in their local communities.
  
  
• Themed E-Dialogue Groups and E-Working Groups to maintain contact between participants and provide supplemental training, networking, support, and follow-through between events, and promote collaboration on practical efforts..
  
  
• Clinical Consultation to augment training projects, intended to provide easy access between trainers and trainees, as well as between trainees, for clinical consultation, additional professional learning, and support.
  
  
• Establishing an ongoing Chronicle of projects, collaborations, and new organizations that have come out of CBI's conferences over the last 14 years.
  
  
• An expanded Photo Album to share photos from our events and projects (eventually with audio-video capability)
  
  
• E-Publishing (see above Publishing Vehicle)
  
  
• Future planned enhancements:
  • distance learning capability
  • streaming video and audio for access to material from our events
  • Audio-Video E-conferencing
    
    
• Virtual Global Youth Community - a virtual community for cross-cultural interaction made up of participants of our international youth conferences, intended for and operated by the youth themselves. Youth participants will have opportunities to follow up on their conference participation by continuing to collaborate on joint projects having to do with ecological/environmental and conflict transformation issues in their respective physical communities. The virtual community will also be linked to the youth sections of cooperating organizations, including the Jane Goodall Institute.
  The virtual neighborhood enlists youth participants themselves in co-creating ways it can be further developed. This includes collaborating on uses, content, features, and character of the forum to reflect their unique purposes and potential, and to provide a vehicle for 1) shared learning and wisdom, 2) collaboration on joint projects, and 3) maintaining their evolving intentional community. Initially this section will include:
  
  • a youth community Newsletter to share personal thoughts and opinion, news of activities, opportunities for involvement and cooperation, stories, poetry, art, etc.
    
  • global Dialogue Groups to provide ongoing, threaded dialogue between all youth participants and their organizations. The dialogue groups will have the capability of including a general conversation section and separate sections divided by topic for more focused dialogues - particularly intended to help promote cooperative efforts and projects, and to maintain direct personal contact.
    
  • a web-based Photo Album to share pictures from shared events, each others communities, projects, etc. (eventually with audio-video capability), and
    
  • a Youth Peace Resolution page where the resolution created at the 2004 Ecology of War and Peace youth conference in St. Petersburg, Russia can be shared, responded to, and built on.
    

  There has already been the wish expressed to extend this service and create a wider Internet community that would include more individuals, youth organizations, schools, etc. from each participant' home community.

   How You Can Get Involved

     If you are interested in contributing your time, energy, and talents to assisting
     our international efforts,

Join Us To:

• create new possibilities for conflict transformation, prevention and healing in this pivotal time,
  
  
• form unique relationships with individuals and organizations throughout the world, and
  
  
• gain invaluable professional and personal experiences along the way.

Find Out More On Becoming Involved
with Common Bond Institute