(Reposted from: David J. Smith Consulting, November 15, 2019)
By David Smith
Again this year, I was honored to spend a morning with students participating in the Community College Initiative program at Northern Virginia Community College. I’ve participated in 2018, 2017 and 2016. This year’s students came from Indonesia, Kenya, Turkey, South Africa, Cote D’Ivoire, Colombia, Egypt, the Dominican Republic, Ghana, Brazil, and Bangladesh.
This year I was joined by three young peacebuilding professionals: Vahe Mirikian from Peace Direct, Desmond Jordan from the U.S. Institute of Peace, and (again!) Mena Ayazi from the Alliance for Peacebuilding. They each talked about their experiences working in the field and provided advice to students on how to integrate peacebuilding into their communities.
We engaged in career bingo which allows students to connect with each other in considering peacebuilding activities.
The highlight was peace entrepreneur. Here, I had students come up with a project or activity they could run to promote community peace.
