Who would come from half-way around the world to enroll in a program at 91����Ƶ that was so new, no college catalog listed it? Sam Gbaydee Doe did. From Liberia.

Initially, the plump squirrels running around campus dismayed him: They could be food for very hungry people in his war-torn homeland. He himself would have welcomed eating a scrap from a squirrel not long before.

Today [November 2010] Doe is a “development and reconciliation advisor” with the United Nations Development Programme in Sri Lanka, thanks in part to his master’s degree in conflict transformation from 91����Ƶ.

Herein we explore the lives and reflections of the first group of students to complete 91����Ƶ’s Conflict Transformation Program (CTP), now called graduate studies in conflict transformation under the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP). In this series of articles, the acronyms “CTP” and “CJP” will appear somewhat interchangeably, depending on the interviewee and the years referenced.

CJP’s first MA students

CJP’s first non-credit students, 40 of them, enrolled in the 1994 Frontiers of International Peacebuilding, the earliest version of the Summer Peacebuilding Institute.

The first for-credit students were two US-born Mennonites: Jonathan Bartsch, raised in Pennsylvania, and Jim Hershberger, raised in Kansas. In the fall of 1994, both men began graduate classes, hoping that their MA in conflict transformation program would be accredited by the time they finished. (The program became accredited in the fall of 1996; the men graduated the following spring.) The first courses taken by Bartsch and Hershberger were done mainly as a combination of independent study and one-on-one sessions with the founding director of CJP, John Paul Lederach, and sociologist Vernon Jantzi, author of CJP’s first curriculum.

CJP’s first MA students came with extensive experience beyond the United States. Bartsch had studied at the University of Cairo and Birzeit University near Ramallah in Palestine and could speak Arabic. Hershberger had lived for eight years in Nicaragua as a Mennonite Central Committee volunteer and could speak Spanish.

In January of 1995, they were joined by [student whose name has been redacted for security purposes.]

Ron Kraybill, who helped shape the new program while finishing his PhD in religion in South Africa, also came aboard that January as CJP’s first professor hired exclusively for the program. Hizkias Assefa, an internationally renowned mediator based in Kenya, taught each summer from the beginning.

By the summer and fall of 1995, word had spread, mostly via circles frequented by Lederach, Jantzi and Kraybill. The program grew exponentially, enabling 91����Ƶ to hire Howard Zehr to teach restorative justice in 1996, soon followed by the hiring of two more faculty members, Lisa Schirch and Nancy Good.

Bartsch, Hershberger, and the third student were joined in the fall of 1995 by 12 more students, including four women. By the fall of 2000, six years after CJP first opened its doors, 37 people had earned master’s degrees or graduate certificates and more than 900 had attended its Summer Peacebuilding Institute.

CJP’s first several dozen graduate students now have had 10 to 13 years to gauge the impact of their studies on their lives and work. For the fall/winter 2010-11, Peacebuilder staff sought to contact each of the 37 to collect their reflections. We succeeded in locating 36 of them, 21 men and 15 women.

Without exception, the 36 felt positive about what they “got” from CJP. Many spoke about how their studies influenced their interpersonal relationships, including those within their immediate family. Those who came directly from conflict-ridden situations also spoke about the need for respite, for recharging their inner batteries.

Gilberto Peréz Jr., who completed a graduate certificate in 1999, recalls the ever-present physical violence in south Texas, where he grew up. Even in his family, it was no surprise when he hit his sister. Today, he and his wife Denise, a 1992 91����Ƶ alumna who majored in Spanish and elementary education, “work hard at having a non-violent household.” They use such techniques as paraphrasing what someone has said and reframing things.

Says Pérez: “My [12-year-old] daughter will stand there and tell her [younger] brother, ‘I’m mad at you.’ That’s not what I would have done when I was her age – I would have belted him.”

Babu Ayindo, MA ’98, says when he was growing up in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya, he experienced violence every day of his life. He feels he carries the potential for violence within him, as he thinks most of us do. He and his wife Miriam have taught their children that reacting violently is a short-term act with long-term repercussions. Babu explains:

Momentarily it gives you a good feeling. You’re annoyed, so you kick a chair, or you punch the wall or punch someone. You project on someone else, someone you can easily blame. But if you take your time and reflect on it then you realize that it’s not the best way out. It’s an easy way out, it feels good, but you also live with the trauma you are inflicting on others. You also become a traumatized person.

Sandra Dunsmore began courses at 91����Ƶ while living in El Salvador, where her early Quaker-sponsored peace work involved (in part) listening to people linked to death squads. “I needed some space to think through what I had been involved in, to reflect in a guided way. I hadn’t done a particularly good job of taking care of myself. I couldn’t continue as I had been living.”

On the professional level, 33 of the 36 respondents (92%) mentioned specific ways they have carried their CJP studies into their work as non-profit administrators, mediators, trainers, social service workers, teachers, and other roles.

Jim Bernat, who studied at CJP while working as a mental health specialist in a region 90 minutes from Harrisonburg, says his graduate education helped him “refocus his being, thinking and practice around the principles of justice and nonviolence.”

Bernat is in his 25th year of working for the same government-supported community services board as he did in his CJP days, though he is now an administrator. From his CJP-influenced perspective, Bernat sees justice as “not just what one sees in a court of law, but as an everyday matter: How do we treat our employees here? Do our clients feel valued, and our staff too? How am I contributing to our sense of community?”

In fact, the most enduring trait acquired at CJP, said a majority of the respondents, is viewing the world through distinctive lens. This has proved to be personally transformative.

Daagya Dick, MA ’00, who fostered a network of peacebuilders in Central America from 2000 to 2003, said CJP taught her about shifting “from destructive dynamics to positive dynamics.” She said she gained an “understanding of how people work and what human needs are and how to respond to those needs in a way that people can be positively engaged.” She liked the way the program encouraged “balance and wholeness in life in order to be an effective peacemaker.”

Dick, who now teaches Spanish in a public high school in Kansas, added: “You can call on these skills anywhere you work.”

Christine Poulson, MA ’98, used similar words: “What I learned at CTP would be useful to anybody doing anything. It gave me a better

understanding of the world and of myself. I became a more reflective person. I am better at prioritizing what is really important to me.”

Experiences from 33 countries

That first group of 21 men and 15 women brought rich experience to CTP. They were diverse in almost every respect – age, nationality, ethnicity, and motivation for coming to the then-new program. They were not diverse in religion, however. Most of them were Mennonite-style Christians – eight arrived directly from service with Mennonite Central Committee – though there were also Catholics and mainstream Protestants. One student was exploring Native American religions. But there were no practicing Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, or Jews. These arrived in later years.

In addition to the United States, the 36 students had lived in 33 places: Angola, Bosnia-Herzogovina, Britain, Burundi, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Germany, Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, Karen territory (officially part of Burma/Myanmar), Kenya, Liberia, Mexico, Mozambique, Nagaland (officially part of India), Nicaragua, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Palestine, Peru, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Switzerland, Tanzania, Thailand, Vietnam.

91����Ƶ 60% of these graduate students had survived civil wars or other society-wide violence.

Sam Gbaydee Doe of Liberia, one of the 12 students entering CJP in its second year, told this story in When You Are the Peacebuilder, a spiral-bound book published by CJP in 2001:

In December of 1989, I was only two semesters away from achieving my dream [to finish a degree in economics and accounting and become a banker] when the Liberian civil war began. By May of 1990, the rebels had captured every part of the country except the executive mansion where the president was hiding.

By July, 1990, we had gone without food for nearly three months and were hiding under beds and between concrete corners most of the day. One day there was a temporary cease-fire and I decided to take a walk, just to flex my muscles. While walking around this slum community, I came across a young boy, lying under the eaves of a public school. I remember his face like it was yesterday. He was just skin and bones.

I stood over him for quite a while. His mouth was open. Flies were feeding on his saliva. In a surreal moment, I raced to a nearby community to find something edible. I found some popcorn being sold for fifty cents. I bought some and dashed back to this child. I stooped over him, slipped a few pieces of the popcorn into his mouth, and waited anxiously to see him chew the popcorn and regain his strength. ‘Chew your popcorn, you innocent child,’ I said to myself, ‘God has answered your prayer.’

91����Ƶ ten minutes passed by but his little mouth remained frozen. It must have been half an hour later when, with a last rush of energy, he opened his eyes wide and looked at me. Our eyes locked. He shook his head, and closed his eyes. After several minutes, his movements slowed and eventually stopped. The child had given up the ghost. I began to cry profusely. I asked myself, “How many children like you are dying right now throughout this country? How many have been swallowed in the madness of adults?’

I made a pledge to that boy: I would work for peace so that children could live… I have never turned my back on the promise I made to that nameless and faceless child.

From one success to another

Doe went on to earn his master’s and doctoral degrees in the field of peace, co-found what is now the largest peace organization in Africa (WANEP), join the staff of the United Nations, and spend several years in Sri Lanka, helping that country emerge from 30 years of civil war. In the long term, he sees himself working in Africa once again.

Periodically, Doe teaches at 91����Ƶ’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI). He will teach “conflict-sensitive development” at SPI 2011. He will also attend 91����Ƶ’s graduation ceremony in the late spring, proudly watching as his daughter, Samfee Doe, receives her bachelor’s degree.

— Bonnie Price Lofton, MA ’04 (conflict transformation)

Editor and writer of Peacebuilder

Our 36 Alumni

These 21 men and 15 women arrived at CJP from 1994 through 1998 after having lived and worked in a total of 33 countries. They all completed their studies before 2001. These are CJP’s earliest graduates (with their current place of residence), except for one we could not locate.

1. , MA ’98 // Kisumu, Kenya
2. , MA ’99 // Harrisonburg, Virginia
3. , MA ’97 // Boulder, Colorado
4. , MA ’00 // Culpeper, Virginia
5. , MA ’99 // Washington DC
6. , MA ’99 // Shortsville, New York
7. , MA ’00, PhD // Bluffton, Ohio
8. , MA ’99 // Meridian, Mississippi
9. , MA ’00 // McPherson, Kansas
10. , MA ’98, PhD // Colombo, Sri Lanka
11. , Grad. Cert. ’97 // Washington DC
12. , MA ’00 // Winnipeg, Canada
13. , MA ’98 // Charlottesville, Virginia
14. , MA ’00 // Chorlton-cum-Hardy, England
15. , MA ’97 // Harrisonburg, Virginia
16. r, Grad. Cert. ’97 // Harrisonburg, Virginia
17. , MA ’99 // Harrisonburg, Virginia
18. , MA ’99 // Chorlton-cum-Hardy, England
19. , MA ’98 // Harrisonburg, Virginia
20. , MA ’00 // Dimapur, Nagaland (India)
21. , MA ’00 // Washington DC
22. , MA ’98 // Harrisonburg, Virginia
23. , MA ’99 // London, England
24. , MA ’00 // Harrisonburg, Virginia
25. , MA ’00 // San Jose, Costa Rica
26. , MA ’00 // Hagerstown, Maryland
27. , Grad. Cert. ’99 // Goshen, Indiana
28. , MA ’98 // Staunton, Virgina
29. , MA ’99 // Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina
30. , MA ’00, PhD // Arlington, Virginia
31. , MA ’99 // Harrisonburg, Virginia
32. , Grad Cert. ’97 // Hastings, Minnesota
33. , MA ’00 // Belfast, Northern Ireland
34. , MA ’00 // Lancaster, Pennsylvania
35. , MA ’97 // Ashburn, Virginia
36. , MA ’99 // Maputo, Mozambique

Kisumu, Kenya

Babu Ayindo grew up in the slums of Nairobi, where he says people experience injustice and violence daily and often wonder whether life is worth living.

After finishing the BEd program at Kenyatta University, Babu became the founding artistic director of the Amani People’s Theatre in Nairobi. “It was inspired by Brazilian educators Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal,” he says. “Our drama aimed at not just entertaining, but also raising questions on peace and social justice, so that communities could join in both the acting and in seeking collective solutions to the problems their communities were facing.”

Babu elaborates on the role of the arts in conflict transformation in Peacebuilding in Traumatized Societies, a 2008 book edited by 91����Ƶ professor Barry Hart. Babu’s chapter is titled “Arts Approaches to Peace: Playing Our Way to Transcendence.”

In 2009-10, Babu consulted in over 10 countries besides his own Kenya. Recently, he has been a consultant to the German foundation Konrad Adenauer-Stiftung, the Austrian foundation DKA, the Fellowship of Christian Councils and Churches in the Horn and Great Lakes of Africa, Catholic Relief Services in Kenya, and PACT Kenya.

He has taught peacebuilding, often linked to the arts, around the world, including at the Peace Center of the Mindolo Ecumenical Peace Foundation (Zambia), the Caux Scholars Program (Switzerland), Mindanao Peace Institute (Philippines), Canadian School of Peacebuilding, American University in Washington DC, the JustPeace Youth Camp in the Fiji Islands, and 91����Ƶ’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI).

Babu frequently collaborates with what he jokingly calls the “91����Ƶ mafia,” referring to the thousands of people who have come through one of CJP’s programs, such as the MA program, SPI and STAR (Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience).

“I meet the ‘91����Ƶ mafia’ not just in Africa, but all over the world – from Winnipeg [Canada] to the Fiji Islands – while doing trainings, research and social action processes within civil society and government,” he says.

When not traveling for work, Babu focuses on cultivating a healthy relationship with nature, acknowledging it as the sustainer of all life. Babu, his wife Miriam, and three children – 16-year-old Biko, 11-year-old Sankara, and 6-year-old Che – grow much of what they consume on their quarter-acre farm in the peri-urban city of Kisumu. They raise cattle, goats, and chickens and grow passion fruit, mangos, cabbage, kale, tomatoes, and onions.

Read more about Babu in an article published in the fall/winter 2006 issue of Peacebuilder (). It talks about Babu’s role in a workshop in rural southern Sudan that was threatened by drunken, armed men in a pick-up truck.

Harrisonburg, Virginia

As director of the “Welcome Center” of the Harrisonburg public school system, Nathan Barge leads the team that registers, evaluates and places hundreds of incoming students. 91����Ƶ half of these come from households that speak a language other than English. Barge himself speaks Spanish, in addition to his native English, having spent 14 years with his wife, Elaine, in Latin America as a volunteer with Mennonite Central Committee.

In the early 1990s, Nathan and Elaine led grassroots groups from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to Colombia to take classes with teachers and practitioners with the JustaPaz organization, four of whom helped shape CJP: John Paul Lederach, Vernon Jantzi, Ricardo Esquivia, and Paul Stucky. The older of two Barge daughters, Rebecca, was born in a war zone in El Salvador, and the family was almost killed when caught in a battle. Co-workers were imprisoned and interrogated. The family also lived through an earthquake.

Such experiences drove home the fragility of life and helped them to understand the common expression, “I will see you tomorrow, God willing.” Nathan entered 91����Ƶ as a graduate student in 1995 as a way of processing what the family had experienced, retooling for new work, and studying a subject that interested him.

As he neared the end of his MA studies, he started a restorative justice program in Harrisonburg in 1999, but left it in 2004 for the school system job. The move was necessary to put the family on better financial footing before the Barge daughters entered college. Nathan continues to do volunteer work as a mediator and restorative justice practitioner. Formerly, he was board president of Gemeinshaft, a Harrisonburg program to assist ex-prisoners to transition to living productively in mainstream society.

Boulder, Colorado

Jonathan Bartsch’s organization, CDR – which stands for Collaborative Decision Resources – was founded in 1978, making it one of the oldest mediation and facilitation organizations in the United States. CDR’s 12 facilitators and two support staff are nationally known for facilitating discussions between people affected by, or involved in, plans made by multiple federal, state, and local governmental entities. As Jonathan explains, “I design and facilitate multi-stakeholder collaborative processes to address public policy disputes.”

He has particular expertise in helping regions to consider and thoughtfully address environmental concerns linked to the shortage of water and the building of highways. As an example, he facilitated the Governor’s Water Policy Task Force in Nebraska, which included 49 diverse water users and resulted in a new law for managing and addressing surface and groundwater conflicts. Internationally (approximately 25% of CDR’s work is international), Jonathan has consulted with the Korean and Japanese governments on two controversial highway projects, discussing various approaches to stakeholder engagement and negotiation.

Prior to entering CJP, Jonathan spent several years in Egypt, Palestine, Afghanistan and Pakistan, building on his Pennsylvania State University studies in Arabic and the Middle East as an undergraduate. He has studied and taught at the American University of Cairo, Birzeit University outside Ramallah (Palestine), and at the Islamic University of Afghanistan (during the Taliban era). He and his wife, Juliette, have also lived in Peshawar, Pakistan, where they worked for MCC and consulted with CARE, Save the Children and some other non-profit organizations. They have a son and a daughter.

Madison, Virginia

For the last 25 years, Jim Bernat has worked in Culpeper, Virginia, a town that is mid-way between the two universities in his state that offer master’s degrees pertaining to conflict transformation: 91����Ƶ and George Mason University (GMU). Jim holds an undergraduate degree in counseling from GMU. But he passed up a chance to get a master’s degree at his alma mater “for a fraction of the cost of going to 91����Ƶ,” because he preferred the practice focus of 91����Ƶ’s program and because he felt more welcomed by 91����Ƶ.

Jim started his multi-decade career with the Rapidan-Rappahannock Community Services Board as a substance abuse counselor, working with lots of people who had criminal records. Today he is an administrator, charged with supporting and improving the work of 300 employees in three clinics serving thousands of people with mental health problems.

He calls Howard Zehr his “most quoted person” and only wishes CJP had offered courses on organizational development when he was a student. (It does now.) On a sobering note, Jim says: “Our system is clearly broken, because we’re seeing the second generation of people we saw when we first came here. The cycle is continuing.”

Jim had to hold onto his job while he was taking CJP classes – his income was needed for his family of four – so he commuted 90 minutes to class and home immediately afterwards. “As a commuter, there is something you do lose,” he says, referring to his absence of bonds with his fellow classmates. He would recommend that commuting students try to do at least one semester in residence or live on campus for the .

Washington DC

Atieno (known as Jennifer Atieno Fisher when at CTP) has led retreats and team coaching for the World Bank, NASA, the Small Business Association, Accenture, Adventist Health, police departments, public service agencies, hospitals, schools and non-profits. She has coached over 100 private clients, 30 young leaders from the Middle East, and 20 large teams of election campaign volunteers. She has provided experiential training for about 1,000 professionals.

Then, on June 30, 2010, Atieno and her husband Shawn had their first child, Samia Luisa. Two months later she posted this humorous item on her Facebook page: “Nurse, check, walk dogs, check, groceries, check, nurse, check, sweep, check, plants, check, laundry, check, nurse [and so on],” prompting one friend to reply, “LOL. I remember those days” and another to write, “Funny, you sound like a mother.”

Interviewed for Peacebuilder, Atieno explained that she continues to coach clients via telephone and is still able to lead team retreats and trainings for government agencies and occasional stress reduction workshops in the community. She leads a group coaching class for her non-agency clients and has recently added a weight-loss coaching business line. She noted she is certified as a psychodramatist, yoga instructor, executive coach, and practitioner of appreciative inquiry.

Atieno observed that her professional interests cross the lines of traditional disciplines – she was pleased with what she learned in her MA in conflict transformation program, but she also would have felt comfortable earning a master’s degree in counseling, social work or organizational development.

Shortsville, New York

In the late 1960s, around the time of his first stint as an 91����Ƶ student, Willy Bontrager did voluntary service in the Congo for two years and in Nigeria for a year and a half. Upon returning home, he spent a couple of decades as a dairy farmer in western New York State. Willy next tried his hand at a “thoroughly boring” bakery business. He underwent training in the Quaker-founded Alternatives to Violence Program (AVP) and became an AVP volunteer in Attica Prison, a high-security institution near his home. After a volatile prison incident that he handled successfully, he began talking to his first cousin, Vernon Jantzi, about 91����Ƶ’s fledgling program in conflict transformation.

Willy was then 55 years old, with a son in grade 8 and a daughter in grade 1. Was it foolish of him to pursue a master’s degree at a university located almost 8 hours by car from his home? With the support of his wife, a school psychologist, Willy finally decided to enroll. He drove the 16-hour round-trip to weekend and summer classes for four years. The next stage in Willy’s history is described on www.pirirochester.org, the website of Partners in Restorative Justice Initiatives. It reads, in part:

While completing his master’s degree in restorative justice at 91����Ƶ in March 1998, Will Bontrager gathered members of Rochester’s governmental departments, nonprofit agencies, victim advocacy groups and interested individuals to introduce them to the principles of restorative justice. Less than two years later, in May 2000, Bontrager founded the Finger Lakes Restorative Justice Center.

He directed the center until 2003, then stepped away because “I disliked intensely applying for grants,” and he felt fresh energy was needed. Today the center has reached dozens of schools, courts and communities – and hundreds of people – in western New York State through trainings, facilitations and presentations. Some schools arrange for all their personnel to be trained in restorative practices, including doing circles in the classroom. In one recent year, the organization handled 40 cases referred from area courts. Comments Willy: “You never know when you start something, how it will turn out and how many people you will impact.”

Bluffton, Ohio

After completing a bachelor’s degree at 91����Ƶ in 1996, Laura Brenneman joined Lutheran Volunteer Corps in Chicago where she was an activist for human rights through 1998. She was among delegations that visited the US Congress, advocating for a change in foreign policy in Latin America to reduce human rights abuses. She also organized delegations to Cuba and Guatemala, and she “went after Nike, The Gap, Disney, and other corporations with sweatshops around the world.”

Today, as a professor who explores the intersection between religion and conflict transformation work, Laura values the way CJP is willing to deal with the “tension” between the concepts of peace and justice. Pushing for justice tends to cause disharmony, at least in the short term, she says. “Folks who feel comfortable with the way things are will see you as an irritant if you point out that the existing structure is unjust, that oppression is structuralized.”

Laura is not the type to parse her words. She views the lack of access to health care for all US citizens as “scandalous,” adding that it is “egregious to be willing to throw away the most vulnerable in our society.” Laura supports activism more than engaging in it these days: “It takes a lot of time to be an activist, and I can’t do my teaching job and that too. I have to trust that other people are doing what I can’t do.” Concurrently with earning her MA at CJP, Laura earned a second MA at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, followed by a PhD from the University of Durham in the United Kingdom.

In her classes, she never misses the opportunity to highlight “the economic disparity between the rich and the poor, and what systems lead us to this disparity.” But she also tells her students not to feel that the problems are so big, they are impossible to solve. “The trick is not to be immobilized by the fact that we can’t do everything or see quick results. I tell my students to start at the local level by breaking down the barriers in our own community between the rich and the poor and by working to get food, shelter and clothes to those who need it.” Laura is also working to establish restorative justice and mediation programs in the Bluffton area.