Is meditation the missing link to peacebuilding?

This post is written by Mandar Apte, Executive Director, Cities4Peace; Rosa Lagunas, Program Coordinator, Cities4Peace; and Sinead O'Hara, Graduate Student, Queen's University, Canada

The pursuit of peace is by definition a collaborative effort, and if all stakeholders and their needs are not included in the peacebuilding process then as a consequence, certain crucial aspects of building sustainable peace can be overlooked. One such need is to provide socio-emotional or psychosocial support to manage the unheralded traumas of the affected individuals including the victims, perpetrators and survivors of violence. This lack of attention and support to heal from trauma and managing mental wellbeing can lead to continued cycles of violence that is then blamed on prevailing socio-political problems in the community.

With the growing challenges of violence across cities and communities worldwide, such as sexual and gender-based violence, suicides, homicides, gangs, and drugs, the practice of peacebuilding needs to be now adapted to a community level and even to an individual level. This means prioritising the engagement and empowerment of all community members to reduce violence and enable them to create localised solutions that they feel ownership of. In order to attain this, we need to foster innovative methodologies wherein ‘everyone’ is viewed as an essential part of building sustainable peace.

In this article, we hope to contribute to the discussion of a novel approach that is centred around promoting the ‘inner healing’ of an individuals' personal experiences of violence and trauma. It is our belief that sustainable peace is compromised due to factors such as intergenerational trauma, cyclical violence, lack of access to evidence-based healing modalities, and the prevalence of unhealthy coping mechanisms. It is a universal experience that our actions and behaviours are affected by our emotions. The inability to manage our emotions and unhealed trauma can often lead to violent tendencies, leading us to potentially hurt ourselves and/or otherwise hurt others.

The challenge

Orange County has long experienced challenges such as hate crimes, homelessness, poverty, and drug overuse. The pandemic has made the situation worse, similar to many other communities worldwide. The violent crime rate for 2020 was 230 crimes/100,000 population. There were 82 hate crime offences in 2020. The Covid-19 pandemic has left many emotional scars on the residents due to unemployment, mental health concerns, etc. Community leaders have worked hard to help their community overcome these challenges by rebuilding, but the leaders are struggling themselves with burnout after being on the frontlines for over a year.

Community leaders and organisations are very effective in understanding and addressing the challenges as they often work on the personal level. They are a key resource to maintaining safe, peaceful neighbourhoods. But this also means that they need to be equipped with evidence-based tools and strategies to reduce their own trauma, enhance their own resilience, and develop heightened socio-emotional skills, in order to handle difficult conversations and situations that can unfold during their local peacebuilding work.

The Cities4Peace initiative designed and implemented our flagship programme - the Ambassadors of Peace (AOP) certification programme for eleven community leaders from across Orange County. The programme was implemented from April to June 2021, and was sponsored by the Orange County Community Foundation (OCCF).

What is the Ambassadors of Peace (AOP) programme?

Cities4Peace is an initiative of the International Association for Human Values (IAHV) - a nonprofit NGO in consultative status at the UN ECOSOC. IAHV programs promote universal human values of non-violence, dignity, equity, justice, and well-being. The cornerstone of the Ambassador of Peace (AOP) program developed by Cities4Peace is to provide participants with evidence-based SKY breathing and meditation techniques to heal from trauma, reduce stress, increase self-awareness, and build resilience. During the training, participants also undergo group processes and interactive discussions to enhance their social cohesion and envision novel solutions for overcoming their community challenges.

Participants are subsequently trained to engage and teach these ‘inner peace’ building strategies to their community stakeholders. Participants are encouraged to take ownership for the knowledge in the teaching module, and are encouraged to present it in suitable ways that are authentic and appropriate to them and their participants. This approach of empowering the community peacebuilder is based on the understanding that community leaders have a unique insight into the local context and often have a greater credibility to reach those at highest risk and engage in the work of violence prevention. When accepting applicants to join the AOP programme, we also look into factors like the applicant’s passion, commitment to their community, and influence. We pursue non-typical avenues of assessing community influence, for example in the Orange County cohort one of the participants was a hairdresser.

The results

Based on surveys done pre and post-training, and results analysed by Charitable Ventures (a third party community organization in Orange County), it was reported that 90% of the participants agreed or strongly agreed that the AOP training and specifically the SKY breath and meditation practices:

• Helped to be more effective in their personal and professional life;
• Increased their ability to develop strong social connections and build trusted relationships.
• Enhanced their ability to control and/or regulate emotions when faced with challenging solutions;
• Helped in their ability to stay focused; and
• Increased energy levels

Participants have shared their testimonials in a brief video here

100% of respondents believe their peers would benefit from this training and would recommend the programme. Participants cited that the training has provided them with tools that can address much of the trauma faced by their clients and community stakeholders, as well as their own. During the training, participants also reported a deeper connection to themselves, their families and also with the people that they serve, thus enabling a deeper experience of compassion. Three months after the AOP training, participants shared how the practices and wisdom learned during their AOP training have continued to help them deal with challenges that arise during their day in both their personal and professional life.

Our work in Orange County has showcased the benefit of our programme, specifically the SKY breath and meditation practices and how it has helped individuals to effectively heal their trauma, manage negative emotions and build resilience. This inner healing is a key building block and often a missing link; in the peacebuilders toolkit to make them more effective in creating sustainable peace in the communities that they serve. We believe that the cycles of violence can be stopped by further empowering community leaders, who have influence and credibility, to share these inner peace strategies and approaches with the affected population in their communities. We hope that our work can inspire community leaders including those working in public health, public safety to prioritise investing and investigating in tools like SKY and approaches like AOP that focus on improving the self-care of the peacebuilders to support their mission of promoting safer, healthier, and peaceful neighbourhoods. As one of our recent AOP participants, Phillip Senteno, said after undertaking the programme:

“Hurt people may hurt others. Healed people will always heal others”.

— Mandar Apte, Rosa Lagunas and Sinead O'Hara

You can reach the Cities4Peace team with thoughts, comments and suggestions at info@cities4peace.org

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(Photo credit: Unsplash)