Mediators Beyond Borders International

Webinar: Become a Powerful Ambassador for Peace Without Losing Your Courage

By

Join us in our next conversation on How To Become a Powerful Ambassador for Peace Without Losing Your Courage by Dr. Scilla Elworthy, 3x Nobel Peace Prize nominee and Sheva Carr, CEO of Heart Ambassadors and Co-Vice President of UN Peace messenger Organization Pathways To Peace. and Dr.

Register now to join us on Monday, September 9, 2019, at 12:00 PM ET in this interactive online conversation to learn about the most up to date, proven, real-world frameworks, tools, practices, and support for building peace locally and globally.

Register here

We need individuals like Dr. Elworthy to start the work of preventing war… This has been my personal dream for many years. –His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Dr. Scilla Elworthy is a three times Nobel Peace Prize nominee for her work with Oxford Research Group to develop effective dialogue between nuclear weapons policy-makers worldwide and their critics, work which included a series of meetings between Chinese, Russian and western nuclear scientists and military. She founded Peace Direct in 2002 to fund, promote and learn from local peacebuilders in conflict areas: Peace Direct was voted “Best New Charity” in 2005. Scilla was awarded the Niwano Peace Prize in 2003 and was an adviser to Peter Gabriel, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Sir Richard Branson in setting up “The Elders.” Scilla co-founded Rising Women Rising World in 2013 and Femme Q in 2016 to establish the qualities of feminine intelligence for women and men as essential to use in building a safer world.

Her latest book, The Business Plan for Peace: Building a World Without War (2017) and her book Pioneering the Possible– awakened leadership for a world that works (North Atlantic Books, 2014) received critical acclaim from experts in the field. Click here to read more about Dr. Elworthy.

We need a worldwide initiative for educating heart in modern times…. The purpose in life is to increase the warm heart. –His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Sheva Carr is the CEO of Heart Ambassadors and Co-Vice President of UN Peace Messenger Organization Pathways To Peace, a Doctor of Oriental Medicine, Board Certified Polarity Therapist and Registered Polarity Educator, and expert HeartMath trainer and coach. She’s the founding CEO of Fyera! Inc, the architect of HeartMath’s HeartMastery program, the founding Executive Director of the Fyera Foundation and Sunflower SunPower Kids. Sheva authored “Being the Source of Love” and “Where the Sky Meets the Earth,” and is featured as a “love luminary” in Marci Schimoff’s New York Times bestselling book “Love for No Reason.”

She co-founded the annual Women Illuminated Film Festival parallel to the UN NGO Commission on the Status of Women. She is also the founding visionary behind www.operationbigsister.org designed to contribute to efforts to end sex trafficking.

Sheva speaks to people all over the world on how to access heart intelligence and peace of mind, in order to receive the benefits of the heart’s impact on their relationships, health, performance, creativity, contribution, legacy, social change, and the building of a global culture of peace. Click here to read more about Sheva Carr.

Please note that the deadline to register for this webinar is one day before the event. We will send the Zoom access link to registrants after the registration closing time and on the day of the event.

For further information about this our other webinars, contact us at webinars@mediatorsbeyondborders.org.

Join us and stay updated on MBBI’s news and events. 

Webinar: Rumble and Rise Skills for Authoring New Social Contracts

By

Join us in a conversation on Brave Speak: Rumble and Rise Skills for Authoring New Social Contracts One Conversation at a Time by Ei Ei Samai, Principal at Samai Culture Design, on Wednesday, August 14, 2019, at 2:00 PM ET.

Conversations about diversity, equity, and inclusion can be cortisol triggering for many people. Not knowing what to say or worrying that “your words won’t match your heart” as Brené Brown says, can keep us from having brave interactions. Yet, to prevent perishing as fools on this hurt planet, we must learn to live together and practice courage every opportunity we have. A certified Dare to LeadTM facilitator and Neuroscience of Conversations practitioner, Ei Ei will set a safe experiential container for practicing daring conversations. 

Interactions included:

  • Group agreements
  • Compile real scenarios
  • Have guided conversations
  • Prepare for rise and repair 

Register here

 

Ei Ei Samai uses neuro, social, and design sciences to facilitate the growth of brave people, teams, and social contracts. Her skill-building as a mindful cross-cultural communicator began when she learned Vipassana meditation as a 4-year-old. She began her journey with justice work as a working-class immigrant teen at a Silicon Valley High School in the 90s, later participating in student and women of color spaces in college to learn from liberation movement builders such as Angela Davis and Grace Lee Boggs. She gained her aptitude for system and pattern thinking through a combination of Pre-Med and Religious Identity studies. 

In addition to holding a Master of Science in Organizational Management and Transformative Leadership, she is certified in advanced facilitation, experiential training, community mediation, conflict transformation, restorative justice, ecological model of leadership, human system design, and in Conversational Intelligence® by the late Judith Glaser. In 2019, she was chosen as a Courage Catalyst in the first cohort of Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead™ Facilitator Training.

With over 20 years of experience in social impact, Ei Ei holds grounded expertise in shaping bold conversations in areas such as educational equity, diversity and inclusion, social and environmental justice, trust recovery, client experience, team dysfunction, collective impact strategy planning, program and service design, family and community engagement, collaborative partnerships, knowledge management, and organizational culture. Click here to read more about Ei Ei and her work. 

Please note that the deadline to register for this webinar is one day before the event. We will send the Zoom access link to registrants after the registration closing time and on the day of the event. For further information about this our other webinars, contact us at webinars@mediatorsbeyondborders.org.

Join us and stay updated on MBBI’s news and events. 

Changemakers, Risktakers, Trailblazers & Peacebuilders. Member Spotlight: Veronica Jacob

By

Veronica Jacob is the founder of Uncommonly Positive, a for-profit, for-purpose social impact enterprise that inspires, educates, and spotlights creative people and change-makers dedicated to making a positive difference in the world through their life and their work. In addition to spearheading the planning for MBBI’s 2019 Peace Congress in Bali — in collaboration with her co-chair Dennis Phua— Veronica has recently joined the organization’s staff as the Director of Innovation and Impact Investment.

Playful, Personal, and Purposeful

Veronica self-describes her style of mediation as the three Ps: Playful, Personal, and Purposeful. Her unique background as a Coptic Egyptian makes her acutely aware of religious, ethnic, and gender disparities. This identity has shaped her understanding of cultural diplomacy, mediation, and community cohesion. From Belize to South Africa, from Oklahoma to Uganda, Veronica has been able to make interpersonal and genuine connections with cultures globally.

She obtained her bachelors from Duke in Public Policy, a multidisciplinary field committed to exploring complex social, economic, and political issues. But she sought out multiple opportunities to put theory into practice. Her first foray into social impact work was in Zambia, where she joined a group of young professionals to develop a community outreach initiative to establish a local hospital, HIV clinic, and citizen training program still in effect to date. Her social impact work continued in Belize. As a grant recipient from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, working in partnership with Peacework, she helped develop life-skills curriculum for at-risk youth. Bringing together grassroots organizations and government ministries, they developed sustainable models for positive social change, reaching over 400 children across three cities. And in Australia, she conducted anthropological research, examining the unique dynamic between Aborigines and their European counterparts, which advanced cultural exchange as a mechanism for mutual understanding and cultural preservation.

After graduation, she traveled to Cape Town, South Africa for a professional development program where she could focus on the intersection between broadcast media and sustainable social change. She split her time working as a producer and presenter for Cape Town Television, a platform committed being “a voice for the people, by the people,” and as a research analyst for the Southern African Media and Gender Institute, exploring the lingering effects of social and economic disparities in the region. Veronica was asked to present an oral argument before the South African Parliament, advocating an amendment to a bill on xenophobia, which still included language that would condone practices of racial profiling. Consequently, the amendment to the bill was included, and the bill passed without the language condoning racial profiling.

More formative in her career, however, was when by happenstance, Veronica wandered into the Nelson Mandela Center for Conflict Resolution in Cape Town, which had an emphasis on facilitating community dialogues in post-apartheid South Africa. She became quickly engulfed in the world of peacebuilding, reconciliation, and conflict transformation.

Ultimately, it was during her years in law school that the seeds of international law and alternative dispute resolution (ADR) were cultivated. She gravitated towards non-traditional coursework and participated in “Diplomacy Lab”, a pilot program done in partnership with the State Department, conducting a case study on Islamic Law Reform in Arab Spring Countries. Once complete, her report was published and circulated throughout the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics & Law Enforcement Affairs. During her third year in law school, Veronica was selected from a competitive pool of applicants for a fellowship with the U.S. State Department’s Education and Cultural Affairs Bureau, and she worked in the U.S. Embassy in Uganda focusing on entrepreneurship peacebuilding program. She worked with Fulbright Scholars, Washington-Mandela Fellows, and served as a staff aide and speechwriter for Ambassador DeLisi.

Throughout her career, Veronica has based her mediation and social impact work on this modified quote from Mahatma Gandhi “Create the change you want to see in the world.” Because creativity is the root of change, and change is a creative process.

Finding Purpose in the Slums

While U.S. Embassy Kampala played an integral role in her personal and professional development, Veronica’s most fulfilling moment took place in the most unlikely place.  Bwaise is a sprawling slum in Kampala, Uganda, boasting only of its unrivaled crime rates, human trafficking, and unsanitary conditions. If a spotlight was ever brought to this forgotten place, it was never to shed a positive light. However, history tells countless stories that tribulation, when properly harnessed, can shape the most remarkable people. That was the inception of the Bwaise Red Carpet Event, an idea Veronica developed as a fellow in the U.S. Embassy’s Public Diplomacy & Cultural Affairs Office. The vision was to reshape the narrative of desperate people and to tell them, through stories like their own, that it was precisely these formidable conditions that could be their source of strength.

They would hold the event in the concrete and corrugated tin “cinema house,” where the youth and unemployed would traditionally go and pay five shillings to spend their day watching trashy American films. We wanted to transform this dark and uninspiring place into a space of empowerment and inspiration, using real stories of those who had overcome their same obstacles to achieve remarkable success.

“Bwaise Red Carpet Event” was an oxymoron at best.  And while the concept was applauded in theory, no one wanted to take the “risks” associated with its execution. It was uncomfortable; it was time-consuming; it was dangerous; it was far; it was inconvenient; it didn’t have financial support; it wasn’t guaranteed to succeed. So in short, Veronica had the Embassy’s blessing but faced the project alone.

The undertaking required that Veronica build strong partnerships with local leaders; develop clear communication and delegation; inspire ownership of the vision within the community; cultivate creativity and commitment; navigate uncertainty; trust her intuition in a place notorious for its vices; build rapport; commit to the vision above self; and have the humility to recognize that she could not do this alone. And it was the team – committed to this “service” – that made this event possible.

Over 500 attendees packed into the makeshift cinema hall. They heard from accomplished leaders — athletes to academics; statisticians to politicians — whose own stories reflected the struggles of Bwaise. Their partnership and presence represented solidarity the community had never seen. Bwaise was an outcast, but at that moment it was a star. The event was covered across major media outlets and was met with a standing ovation from the crowd. It was the first time, for many, that they saw a possibility beyond their current reality. And the moment she saw all the pieces come together, and the audience’s overwhelming response, she was overcome by the indescribable feeling of losing herself in the service of others.

After her graduation, she would go on to work with the Oklahoma Supreme Court to do ADR mediation throughout the states’ civil and family courts. She continues to practice conflict transformation, cultural diplomacy, and creative collaboration in all elements of her social impact work to date. 

The Thrill of Consensus: Disruptors as Peacebuilders

Following her career after law school, one constant has emerged in Veronica’s life: the adrenaline of solving complex problems, the thrill of creativity in consensus-building, and the euphoria of transforming conflict and cultivating collaboration. Her mantra is the “build rapport with those you may not agree with.” And she accomplishes this goal as a mediator by breaking down barriers as creatively as possible.

To encapsulate this thrill on an international level, Veronica has agreed to be one of the two co-organizers, alongside Dennis Phua from Singapore, for the 9th Biennial MBBI Congress. It will take place on November 6-8, 2019, at the Bali Intercontinental Hotel. Bali, Indonesia, was chosen as the hosting city for its accessibility to a global audience. The Congress’ theme is: DISRUPTORS: Being Peacebuilders in a World of Conflict with the purpose of spotlighting change-makers, and risk-takers, and trailblazers in the peacebuilding space. Veronica believes that “creativity comes from the conflict of ideas,” and peacebuilding is an innovative process. Click here for more details and to register for MBBI’s 2019 Congress in Bali.

Article by Ben Lutz, MBBI Writer

Educating Educators on Restorative Practices. Member Spotlight: Jim Longo

By

Jim Longo is a Professor and Chair of the Education Department at Washington and Jefferson College in Washington, Pennsylvania. Jim is a trained historian and his education background and primary areas of research include gender equity and the role of women in history. He is a member of MBBI’s Internship Task Force, which creates more meaningful internship and volunteer experiences while expanding MBBI’s reach and impact. He is adamant about teaching future teachers mediation techniques, especially restorative practices.

Women’s Role in Mediation and the Engagement of Young Peacebuilders

Alongside his wife and fellow MBBI member Mary Jo Harwood, Jim presented at MBBI’s 7th Congress in Bucharest, Romania, on the role of women in mediation; myth, history, and reality. The MBBI 7th Congress gave him the perfect opportunity to learn international mediation techniques while also showcasing his breadth and depth of knowledge on the role of women in mediation.

Through MBBI’s 7th Congress, Jim became connected with Mary Montague, the 2015 MBBI Peacemaker of the Year winner who was a nurse in Belfast, Northern Ireland, during the Troubles, sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland, was also a front line peacebuilder well before and even after the peace treaty was signed. She is also a founding member of the Women Waging Peace global network. Jim invited Mary to Washington and Jefferson College (WJC) to teach his students about global mediation strategies which helped set up the conflict resolution studies program at WJC.

In some contexts, particularly those in which there is a history of violence, there is a need for community healing and for support in overcoming traumatic experiences, before dialogue or negotiation can even begin. These specific practices focused on restoring the community had become the cornerstone of Mary’s mediation career and coincidentally, of Jim’s educational background. With Mary’s expertise and Jim’s role as an educator, he created a new initiative at WJC focusing on restorative practice.

Furthermore, Jim takes his students to schools in Belfast, Northern Ireland; Dublin, Ireland; and Leeds, England, to learn about mediation techniques and to set up an international partnership and pen pal engagement program. In Ireland, a recent law mandates that restorative practices must be taught in all schools. In continuation of his penpal program and restorative practice initiative at WJC, Jim went to a conference in Ireland of April 2018 to promote and support restorative practices.

It has never been a more crucial time for us to listen with our ears, head, and heart. Relationships built through restorative practice are the oxygen people and communities need to survive and thrive.

Teaching Mediation to Teachers

Before becoming a professor, Jim was a public school teacher for over a decade, at a school that was undergoing racial integration. It became immensely obvious to Jim that his role as a teacher became intertwined with mediation strategies as many conflicts arose as a result of integration. Ensuring that each student is able to process the education they are receiving is just as important as the education itself, and so mediation techniques became a large portion of Jim’s teaching career. This experience prompted him to study and research not only mediation strategies for teachers, but also the curriculum itself. His doctoral degree in Teaching, Curriculum, and Learning Environments is a testament to his direct experiences in the public school system during integration as well as his emphasis on gender equity.

In the vein of creating inclusive classrooms, Jim teaches his students, especially those that will become teachers these restorative practices. “Teachers are more than just educators; they are mediators, community organizers, and advocates for their students.” Teachers are the most important mediators in a child’s life as issues between students, between teachers, between parents, and within the community will arise. Teaching mediation techniques is vital, as teachers will absolutely encounter scenarios where mediation strategies will need to be used in the classroom.

Article by Ben Lutz, MBBI Writer

Self-Regulating Emotions and Making Peace Investible. Member Spotlight: Sheva Carr

By

Sheva Carr is the founding CEO Fyera® and Heart Ambassadors® and the architect of HeartMath’s HeartMastery® Program as well as the founding Executive Director of the Fyera Foundation and Sunflower SunPower Kids. She speaks with people globally on how to access heart intelligence, and on how to receive the benefits of the heart’s impact on consciousness, health, performance, creativity, and social change. As the Co-Vice President and Representative of the United Nations Peace Messenger Organization Pathways to Peace, Sheva connected with MBBI at the Commission on the Status of Women in 2012.

Building a Business Plan for Peace and Heart Ambassadors

The Business Plan for Peace is an acclaimed book by Dr. Scilla Elworthy, and now a yearlong online course co-taught by Sheva and Scilla together through Sheva’s Heart Ambassadors Program that you could register for here. The Business Plan for Peace consists of 25 proven ways to invest in peace successfully. If you’d like to watch a conversation with Scilla, Sheva, Greg Braden, and Prabha MBBI’s own Executive Director, on the Business Plan for Peace you may do so here! The statistics show that $2 billion dollars of investment over ten years is the cost of preventing war, whereas $1.7 trillion (or $1700 Billion) dollars per year is spent on war and military machinery.

The HeartAmbassador Program is spearheaded by Sheva as the training and capacity building community that supports individuals as well as organizations to become powerfully effective agents of change in their homes, communities and the world. Its programs involve both inner and outer, real-world work. They foster self-regulation based on peer-reviewed researched tools and techniques, along with project incubation in harmony with the 17 Sustainable Development Goals from the UN.

Also, at the United Nations High-Level Political Forum on the Sustainable Development Goals this summer, Sheva, and Scilla will be running a workshop on the Business Plan for Peace and the inner self-regulation skills from HeartMath® taught at Heart Ambassadors in collaboration with UNITAR. SDG 16, which focuses on peace, is the least invested SDG of the 17 even though the other SDGs depend upon it for their success and it was the goal around which the UN was founded. The conflict resolution self-regulation skills of Heart Ambassadors alongside the methodology of the Business Plan for Peace can help make sustainable peacebuilding a more concrete value proposition and therefore much more appealing to impact investors.

Heart Ambassadors is an official training company for the Federation of International Civil Servants (FICSA), which focuses on conflict resolution, negotiation, and alternative dispute resolution for global mediators. Sheva and her husband Robert co-taught eleven ‘Lunch N Learns’ for the United Nations Staff through FICSA. You may explore those webinars by visiting www.youaretheun.org.

The Neuroscience of Peacebuilding

Sheva began her peacebuilding career in Nicaragua working with street children. Her visit to Nicaragua occurred during its civil war and upon her return to North America, she was exhibiting physical and emotional symptoms that were difficult for physicians to diagnose. Years later, as a young med student and a volunteer at the HeartMath Institute, she learned she had undiagnosed PTSD from living in the war zone. Using HeartMath’s tools, that Sheva now champions, her symptoms disappeared.

Our hearts are a key portal to self-regulating, and the intelligence for that is connected to our emotions.

The 40+ tools developed in evidenced-based research at HeartMath facilitate access to our heart intelligence, combining the fields of physiology, peace, and neuroscience to track and regulate heart rhythm patterns. This detailed awareness of one’s own heartbeat leads to more self-capable individuals in times of trauma or charged dynamics, empowering them to keep their neurological pathways to higher brain centers open. By fusing neuroscience into peacebuilding, mediators are better able to overcome their own PTSD-like symptoms in order to be more effective mediators, avoiding the perils of secondary trauma and bringing more innovative and creative perspectives to intracted situations. This is known as emotional self-regulation. Sheva has a special welcome letter about this translated into many other languages to be given to Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and refugees!

She observed equally efficient and empowering results in her patients when they applied the HeartMath tools. This inspired her to reach as many people as possible with the practical yet powerful potential of applied heart intelligence, and out of that passion and compassion was born HeartMastery. Furthermore, her impactful trip to Nicaragua led to the creation of the Fyera Foundation to help teach these tools to soldiers undergoing traumatic experiences and to aid the children of Nicaragua.

Sheva is also working on a project to end sex trafficking worldwide through Operation Big Sister. Delightfully, the MBBI-Los Angeles Regional Group hosted an Operation Big Sister Awareness Raising Event! If you would like to host an event in your home or community you can sign up to do so here! Furthermore, July 30th is the United Nations World Day for Ending Trafficking in Persons – a great time to raise awareness about what each of us can do to contribute to efforts to end “the greatest human rights violation in the history of humanity.”

Join the Movement to Revolutionize Peacebuilding

Sheva also mentors teens from Palestine and Israel in peace dialogues through Creativity for Peace and is collaborating with Peace One Day to create a mass meditation event on the International Day of Peace on September 21st. Today, June 21, begins the three-month countdown to the International Day of Peace. To find out how you can participate in the Peace Day events, you can subscribe to Sheva’s newsletter here and/or register for a complimentary 30-minute consultation here to learn more and talk with Sheva’s team about how you can collaborate with Sheva.

On Monday, September 9, 2019, Sheva and Scilla will be presenting a webinar on how to Become a Powerful Ambassador for Peace Without Losing Your Courage through MBBI’s Monthly Webinars. In this webinar, you will learn about the most up to date, proven, real-world frameworks, tools, practices, and support for building peace locally and globally. Register here!

Article by Ben Lutz, MBBI Writer

  • Fyera and Heart Ambassadors are registered trademarks of Sheva Carr
  • HeartMastery is a registered trademark of HeartMath LLC
  • HeartMath is a registered trademark of Quantum Intech Inc