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.