Peacemaking

In our holistic approach to violence prevention and elimination, we work with community members to foster five interrelated forms of peace:

1. Peace of mind: the mental placidity, calm, focus, and awareness needed to do most things well.
2. Peace of body: the physical wellness free of harmful substances and enriched by healthy, active, nourishing, and nutritious practices needed to achieve vitality and wellness.
3. Nonviolence: the prevention and elimination of physical, verbal, emotional, institutional, systemic, environmental, and intimate-partner violence.
4. Liberation: the equanimity and magnanimity arising when we treat each other equally, inclusively, equitably, and benevolently, and give each other similar opportunities to prosper even when we may have different roles, positions, backgrounds, and occupations.
5. Safety: the tranquility arising when trust abounds, when we feel cared-for, and when we have a consistent sense of security and protection from harm.

We guide and empower community members (youth and adults) to embrace the following practices of peacemaking.

• Restorative Justice (which includes conflict transformation and management).
• Mindfulness.
• De-Escalation (especially practices valued by thinkers like Brendan King in books like The 15 Fundamental Laws of De-escalation: How To Put Out Fires, Not Start Them and Calm Every Storm: Preventing Aggressive Behavior with Your Words.
• Accountability.
• Social and Emotional Learning.

We are a regional leader in neighborhood violence prevention and holistic learning for lasting peace.
We view peacemaking as one of the highest expressions of holistic learning. See the five interrelated forms of peace explained above on this web page.

Upāsikā Miss tree turtle defines holistic learning in the following manner:

"Holistic learning ideally begins in the home and the family and branches out into the neighborhood, the community, the school, the workplace, and all over the world. It transforms the whole person, the whole family, and the whole community: physical, mental, and spiritual. 'Spiritual' refers to secular, ethical values advancing a higher good. (Reminder: Wisdom Projects is a secular, nonpartisan nonprofit organization.)"
Miss turtle goes on to say the following: "Rather than viewing people as broken, holistic learning views people  as whole and endowed with the potential for goodness and wellness regardless of challenges, mistakes, oppressions, and offenses. Our lifelong challenge is to keep renewing and restoring our wholeness as we care for ourselves, other people, other species, and our environment." 

Miss turtle says that, "Holistic learning also refers to values and practices that do no harm by advancing peaceful, healthy living within us (in our bodies and minds), between us (in our social and emotional relationships), for us (meaning, all of us equitably and inclusively, and not just a few), and for our environments and the natural world."

She adds that, "Holistic learning views community members as the best assets in their own uplift. Thus, our holistic approach is deeply asset-driven and salutogenic. (In other words, we do not view community members or communities as deficit, or pathogenic. They are, by turns, fortunate and challenged by some of the same patterns of inequity and violence that plague much of American society)."

"A key component of holistic learning is restorative justice. Another key component is a contemplative method for fostering a life dedicated to calm, focus, awareness, self-care, and community-care in the present moment called community participatory mindfulness™."