About the IIPE & CIPE 
"Learning Communities"
Peace education is often described as education for social transformation. Social transformation is a process, we believe, best pursued and sustained cooperatively and communally. The IIPE and CIPE embrace community as a central organizing principle for facilitating social change and transformation.
The IIPE and CIPE function as “learning communities.” Learning communities are intentionally designed spaces where people become engaged in learning toward a common purpose. More specifically the IIPE and CIPE are non-formal learning communities comprised of peace educators who are collectively engaged into the common inquiry of how peace learning can help prepare individiuals and communities to confront, challenge, resist and ultimately eliminate violence in all its forms and manifestations.
In the space of these learning communities we ask ourselves: What needs to be changed? How should that change take place? Who should be involved in making those changes? What do we need to learn to do it? What does that learning look like?
In doing so - this learning is conducted via a communal process; a process framed by the notion of learning with and from one another. This idea of learning with and from each other seems simple enough on the surface, however it is a process considerably foreign to most of our experiences. Consider for a moment how the problems of the world are typically solved. The practice of politics, as it has come to be defined, has little interest in change. It is conducted in a mode of competition, of winners and losers. The institution of politics has become one of, if not the largest contributor to the system of violence; it often exemplifies and magnifies all that is bad in our social relations and classifies citizenry into power relations, robbing individual citizens of their uniqueness as human beings and depriving their dignity.
Most of our formal educational experiences have prepared us to engage in the world in a similar fashion. The challenge we are confronted with is how to prepare people to conduct the politics of change in a different mode; in a learning mode. Nurturing a space for authentic community “learning” is how the CIPE approaches this problem, as social change, we have observed, is a process best arrived at and sustained communally.
In the IIPE and CIPE communities we encourage using learning processes which help nurture individuals capacities of reflection, openness, cooperation, listening, social & political engagement, empathy, and action. When people engage in this process of communal learning many new ideas begin to emerge. Participants begin to challenge and inquire into their world views. The community finds new ways to communicate and new ways to relate to one another. New, collective forms of wisdom and knowledge emerge.
International Institute on Peace Education (IIPE)
The International Institute on Peace Education (IIPE) was founded in 1982 and has since been held annually in different parts of the world. The first IIPE was held at Teachers College, Columbia University and organized by Professors Betty A. Reardon, Willard Jacobson and Douglas Sloan in cooperation with the United Ministries in Education. The IIPE is a multicultural and cooperative learning opportunity that has brought together educators and professionals from around the world to learn with and from each other in short-term learning communities that model principles of critical, participatory peace pedagogy. The Institute is an opportunity for networking and community building and has spawned a variety of collaborative research projects and peace education initiatives at the local, regional, and international levels. The International Peace Bureau, in nominating IIPE for the 2005 UNESCO Peace Education Prize described it as “probably the most effective agent for the introduction of peace education to more educators than any other single non-governmental agency.”
The objectives of each particular institute are rooted in the needs and transformational concerns of the host region. More widely, the social purposes of the IIPE are directed toward the development of the field of peace education in theory, practice and advocacy. In addition to the important learning of contextually relevant issues and pedagogical approaches, the purposes of the IIPE are threefold:
1) To aid in the development of the substance of peace education through exploration of new and challenging themes to contribute to the on-going development of the field.
2) To build strategic international institutional alliances among NGOs, universities and agencies involved in peace education thereby increasing the benefits of shared expertise on substance and practice as well as advancing educational reform initiatives.
3) To encourage regional cooperation toward the maximization of resources, cooperation in pedagogical and substantive developments and increasing regional perspectives on the global issues that comprise the content of peace education. This is accomplished through significant involvement of regional organizations and participants with an annual goal of 50% of the participants from the region.
Click here for more on the history and philosophy of the IIPE>>
Community-based Institutes on Peace Education (CIPE)
Community-Based Institutes on Peace Education (CIPE) emerged in 2005 from the conscientious work, research and planning of members of the IIPE network. The CIPE initiative was developed to address the lack of formal peace education training opportunities and to increase locally based support for educators and educational planners to serve the growing demand for the type of learning that the IIPE offers for educators from all sectors of society. Over the years the IIPE has been successful at nurturing peace education learning communities; however, as an internationally based program, it is not adequately designed to meet local needs.
Significant discussions on the issues of violence, security and peace typically take place at the highest levels, excluding the grassroots educators and their communities whose participation is both necessary and crucial for ensuring equitable outcomes to local and global decision-making. While important work is taking place on the ground, grassroots organizations and educators from conflict zones and developing Nation-States work with very limited resources and have limited access to requisite substantive knowledge and adequate training opportunities. Educators also have limited opportunities to learn, share and strategize with counterparts in other national or world regions, despite the fact that issues related to peace and human security, by their very nature, cross borders and reach into all communities. There is an urgent need to create opportunities for serious and sustained dialogue among frontline educators working on these crucial issues. Such opportunities can enable educators to engage in global civil society and capacitate them to train other educators so that the majority of world citizens can be effectively enfranchised through education for civic participation.
There are formal and non-formal practitioners of peace education in nearly every community around the world, many of which are in the IIPE network. However, support networks at the local level hardly exist. Furthermore, the existing international activities and training possibilities in peace education rarely reflect local needs and relevant practices. In addition, one of the major obstacles to dissemination of the new methodologies and issues experienced by participants in IIPE is the financial and language barriers which prevent many eager for preparation in peace education from traveling to and participating in an annual Institute.
Although rooted in locally based initiatives, CIPEs are envisioned as the foundations of a broader movement for social change through education. CIPEs are intended to foster self-sustaining learning communities, able to support and learn from and with each other, with the goal of addressing and transforming local experiences of violence through learning and education. These local experiences are then further contextualized by relating them to larger, often systemic issues of violence that affect the entirety of the human community. CIPEs may be one-time, stand-alone learning experiences although they are intended to be recurrent so as to provide a constant base of local support and learning exchange. CIPEs warmly wrap together the best of the IIPE – community and cooperation – into a package more suitable to support its constituents and promote social transformation directed toward the reduction and elimination of all forms of direct and indirect violence.
For more on the philosophy, background and history of the CIPE click here>>