SPI 2014 Course Offerings

What’s next?

 

Only one course may be taken per session. If you have questions about a particular course that are not answered in the information below, please feel free to contact the SPI office at .

Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) Level 2

Elaine Zook Barge and Vernon Jantzi
Expand your knowledge of STAR frameworks and models. Learn to adapt STAR concepts to your clients’ needs in order to lead STAR activities and present workshops based on STAR materials. Must have taken STAR Level 1 at least three months previously or have instructor’s permission.

Analysis: Understanding Conflict

Catherine Barnes
Understand different types of conflicts and their origins. Explore relationships and motivations and worldviews. Learn ways to change systems that perpetuate conflict.

Faith-Based Peacebuilding

Roy Hange
Identify sources of conflict and resources for peacebuilding found in several faith communities and traditions. Develop capacity for interfaith engagement.

Media for Societal Transformation

Paulette Moore
Discover the power of digital media for promoting peace, transforming relationships, and building community. No previous digital media experience necessary. Additional lab fees apply.

Understanding Psychosocial Trauma

Al Fuertes
Explore social, psychological, neurobiological, physical, and spiritual processes of moving from violence to healing and transforming trauma with a focus on integrating trauma and peacebuilding.

Nurturing Resilience for Sustained Peacebuilding

Bill Lowrey and Alice Petersen
Learn tools and models for nurturing personal, community and organizational resilience, especially in areas prone to natural disasters or destructive conflicts.

Intensive English for Peacebuilding

Caroline Borden
Refresh and improve your English language skills. Special emphasis on the language of peacebuilding. Useful practice for non-native speakers.
Training only

Practice: Skills for Peacebuilding

Alma Abdul-Hadi Jadallah
Gain essential skills and knowledge for facilitating conflict transformation in interpersonal and group settings. Experience cross-cultural encounters and increase cross-cultural self-awareness.

Leadership for Healthy Organizations

David Brubaker and Roxy Allen Kioko
Focus on the role of leaders in “setting the tone” for healthy organizational functioning and organizational change. Review core management skills including personnel, project and financial management.

Conflict-Sensitive Development and Peacebuilding

Sam Gbaydee Doe
Learn to plan development interventions with sensitivity to the context and people involved in order to increase stabilization, promote resilience, and lower chances of renewed violence. Use a peacebuilding perspective to analyze emerging best practices for recovery and sustainable development.

Designing Peacebuilding Programs: From Conflict Assessment to Planning

Lisa Schirch and Karim Merchant with Marinetta Cannito Hjort
Design comprehensive and strategic peacebuilding policies and programs using the newest planning tools to prioritize information and make complex decisions. Intended for employees of peacebuilding organizations, government agencies, and regional/international organizations.

The Impact of Social Issues on Restorative Justice

Jacqueline Sakho and Carl Stauffer
Explore how race, class, gender, and culture drive individual and community conflict and resilience. Learn dialogue and narrative skills for promoting a justice that restores relationships.

Restorative Justice: The Promise, the Challenge

Carl Stauffer and Johanna McCants
Identify needs and roles of key stakeholders in crimes or violence (victims, offenders, communities, and justice systems). Compare restorative practices to the current criminal justice system.

Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) Level 1

Elaine Zook Barge and David Anderson Hooker
Discover processes and tools for addressing trauma, breaking cycles of violence, and building resilience. Increase awareness of the impact of trauma on the body, mind, beliefs, and behavior of individuals, communities and societies.

Reconciliation and Forgiveness

Hizkias Assefa
Analyze forgiveness and reconciliation in personal, spiritual, social, and political dimensions. Explore implementing these concepts in deeply divided societies.

Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning

Mark Rogers and Charlotte Booth
Learn to formulate and test theories of change to monitor and evaluate conflict intervention programs. Experiment with techniques to improve continuous learning in practice.

Trauma Sensitive Practice and Programming

Barry Hart
Learn to integrate trauma sensitive theory and practice across all stages of emergency response situations and post-conflict contexts.

Course cross-listed with Eastern Mennonite Seminary

May 26 – June 3, 2014

Sermon on the Mount

Mark Thiessen Nation

The Sermon on the Mount is foundational for understanding the core of Jesus’ ethical teaching and practice and his strong witness against violence. This course builds on the Old Testament backgrounds for Jesus’ teaching, the resonance with this core (Matthew 5-7) in other ethical instruction of the New Testament, and where this teaching has been translated into lived practices.

Note: SPI participants interested in this class must register separately with the seminary. Please fill out the seminary’s part-time application, specify your interest in this course on the application, and that you are an SPI participant.

Building Communities

David Anderson Hooker and Soula Pefkaros
Discuss how assets, networks, economics, and spirituality affect community building programs and development projects.

Applied Playback Theatre for Conflict Transformation

Ben Rivers and Jo Salas
Explore a form of theater where actors “play back” audience stories. Together they build a story to support community mobilization, cultural activism, and collective trauma responses to break cycles of violence. No theater experience required.

Mindfulness

Cheree Hammond
Enhance your ability to give full and deep nonjudgmental attention to the present moment while paying attention to how similarities and differences influence discussion.

Peace by Design: Architecture and Design as a Peacebuilding Practice

Barbara Toews and Deanna Van Buren
Explore the influence of architecture and the design of rooms, buildings and settings on peacebuilding processes and outcomes. Learn practical design skills for the field.

Course cross-listed with Eastern Mennonite Seminary

May 26 – June 3, 2014

Managing Congregational Conflict

David Brubaker and Mary Thiessen Nation

Discuss ecclesiology and theology related to conflict, development of skills for dealing with interpersonal conflicts, managing polarities, teaching communication in the congregation, and intervention skills for addressing deeper, more difficult conflicts. Primary attention given to the role of leadership in managing conflict and creating healthy churches.

Note: SPI participants interested in this class must register separately with the seminary. Please fill out the seminary’s part-time application, specify your interest in this course on the application, and that you are an SPI participant.