CMU
Establishes Canadian School of Peacebuilding
A dream is realized for peace building as Winnipeg’s Canadian Mennonite University (CMU) launches its first annual season of summer courses through the new Canadian School of Peacebuilding in July 2009 featuring inspirational speakers from Kenya, South Africa and Canada.
“We are very excited to inaugurate the Canadian Mennonite University’s Canadian School of Peacebuilding (CSOP),” says CMU President Gerald Gerbrandt. “This initiative has been a dream of our founders predating the establishment of CMU. This programming reflects who we are as an institution and it addresses a desperate need in the world today for dialogue and learning around peacebuilding and conflict resolution. The vision has now come to fruition. We are grateful for the participation of our excellent course instructors, sponsors, and participants in launching this important new School.”
CSOP’s guest instructors include Dave Dyck, Professor Irma Fast Dueck, and Janet Schmidt, all of Winnipeg, along with international speakers Babu Ayindo, an international peacebuilding consultant formerly connected with the Mindolo Ecumenical Foundation, Kenya and the Summer Peacebuilding Institute of Eastern Mennonite University (USA), and Professor Piet Meiring of South Africa’s University of Pretoria and a member of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the 1990s.
“The Canadian School of Peacebuilding offers an opportunity for peacebuilders from around the world and from diverse cultures and traditions to come together to learn, to share, to inspire, and to practice peace,” says CSOP Director Jarem Sawatsky, who heads up the summer program offering academic credits and training to peace practitioners and students. “We especially thank our primary sponsor, the Institute for Theology and the Church, as well as donor Helen Rempel for her gift made through the Arthur & Helen (Wiens) Rempel Peacemaking Fund.”
On responding to the invitation to travel to Winnipeg from South Africa to participate in CSOP as a course instructor, Meiring remarks, “Each year, CMU’s Outtatown Program brings students to South Africa to experience the context, problems and history of South Africa. I was impressed by this program and immediately said yes to come to Canada to speak at the new Canadian School of Peacebuilding.” An ordained pastor in the Dutch Reform Church and theology professor at Pretoria, in 1996 Meiring accepted an invitation from Bishop Desmond Tutu and served on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for South Africa.
Broadening his visit beyond campus lectures, Meiring recently met with Manitoba Justice Murray Sinclair, Chair of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Manitoba’s Grand Chief Ron Evans of Norway House Cree Nation, leaders in the Rousseau River Community, and others as part of his participation in CSOP. “We are sharing ideas and exploring ways in which we might cooperate in the area of peacebuilding.”
Meiring, along with other members of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Team, has spoken in Europe, Asia, Africa, the United States, and now Canada. “People think we have the perfect solution. We do not. We have a story to tell. I’m here to share the South African experience of the apartheid and the post-apartheid years.”
Canadian Mennonite University, through its Menno Simons College Campus and Shaftesbury Campus, is said to offer one of the world’s largest undergraduate programs in peace and conflict studies. CMU’s Canadian School of Peacebuilding comes out of a long history, identify, practice and ethos of peacebuilding.
CMU is a chartered Christian liberal arts university in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Drawing on a 480-year tradition of Anabaptist-Mennonite peace practice and over 60 years of teaching peace and conflict studies, CMU’s programs in peace and conflict are some of the oldest and largest in this field.
For information, contact:
Canadian School of Peacebuilding
Director Jarem Sawatsky - jsawatsky@cmu.ca
Date July 8, 2009