November/December 2001 Spirituality
Oregon Peace Institute:
Resources for the Peacemakers

by Leah Stenson, Managing Director of Oregon Peace Institute

Oregon Peace Institute (OPI) was founded in 1985 in response to the 1984 passage of the United States Institute Peace Act and the 1985 passage of the Oregon Nuclear Age Education Act. It is a membership, non-profit Oregon corporation with a mission to promote and make available education and resources for peace and non-violent conflict resolution in individual, community, national, global and environmental contexts.

Many Oregonians have fond memories of OPI’s heyday in the Galleria. They remember stopping by in this very public space to pick up some literature or a T-shirt and perhaps chatting with one of OPI’s founders, ex-congresswoman Elizabeth Furse. Others remember the peace curriculum guide on peace education and non-violent conflict resolution that was distributed to 3,000 teachers in Oregon. Others remember the web TV peace channel; the family peace nights in public schools; the inner city summer peace camps, or one of the numerous other projects that OPI has been involved in over the years.

If OPI had been able to maintain the momentum it began with, it might be a household word in Oregon today. However, for various reasons things fell apart—as they sometimes do in the precarious world of non-profits—and it fell on hard times. Moreover, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Gulf War, people were casting about trying to find new ways to work for peace in what seemed, on the surface at least, to be a relatively “peaceful” world.

In 1996, OPI received a large grant from the United States Institute of Peace to enlarge its library of conflict resolution resources and create OPI’s website with an online library data bank. OPI’s library offerings, which have expanded to 1500 books, videos, non-competitive and simulation games, are central to OPI’s mission of educating the public about conflict resolution. Anyone from the community is welcome to borrow resources from the library, which includes books on peace-making, global issues, anger management, mediation and numerous other topics including the excellent Second Step anti-violence and Steps to Respect anti-bullying curriculums published by the acclaimed Committee for Children. The library offerings can be viewed online at www.orpeace.org.

In addition to maintaining its library, OPI offers monthly workshops in the community. Often these workshops center on some aspect of conflict resolution; however, OPI occasionally offers workshops on other topics such as media violence and forgiveness. The latter topic has proven to be exceptionally popular. Although the workshops are offered free of charge to the public a $10.00 donation is usually encouraged.

For the past couple years, OPI has been trying to find ways to get involved with youth. Fortunately, last year it was able produce a video about young peacemakers in Oregon thanks to the generosity of Portland philanthropist Al Jubitz. OPI partnered with Green Fire Productions to produce “Peace by Piece: Youth Take Action,” and showed this video to the 10,000 youth gathered for the Dalai Lama Youth Peace Summit held in May of 2001. The 16-minute video features the experiences of teens sharing their stories of peacemaking through the mediums of music, poetry, dance and social action. In the course of preparing the video, it became apparent to Green Fire and OPI that there was a need for a campaign to inspire youth to follow the example of positive role models. Thus, the Youth Take Action Campaign was born.

Another project that OPI is currently involved in is One Day of Peace. It is sponsoring a coalition of groups in Oregon that are creating a celebration in recognition of the legislation that was passed by the United States Congress on December 15, 2000 declaring that January 1 should be a day of peace and sharing. It is the fervent hope of the coalition that after Oregon models this celebration the rest of the nation will follow Oregon’s example.

OPI is currently in the Sixth Avenue Building at Portland State University, but sometime in October it will be moving to Suite 308 in the University Center Building on Hall Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenue where it will be housed together with the Conflict Resolution Masters Program at Portland State University. The Director of this program, Rob Gould, who is also the Philosophy Department Chairman at PSU, was one of the founders of OPI. It seems only fitting that OPI should return to its “roots.” It looks forward to pairing the intellectual prowess of the nearly 100 graduate students in the Conflict Resolution Program with passionate action for peace.

Leah Stenson is the Managing Director of Oregon Peace Institute. For information call (503) 725-8192, e-mail orpeace@org. or visit www.orpeace.org.