About a year ago, the Kitchener Grand River Rotary Club decided to become known as a “peace building” club, joining about a dozen other clubs in District 7080 which have also subscribed to this designation. The development of this status within our District was first advocated many years ago by long-time Kitchener Rotarian, Ernie Ginsler, and currently has been made a priority by our District’s Peace Committee, chaired by Past District Governor, Kathi Dick.As you all know, advancing peace is one of the main pillars of Rotary. Peace within Rotary is not seen to be a stand-alone “project,” but rather is a principle that undergirds everything we do. Peace is cross-cutting. Everything Rotary aspires to do is made more effective in an environment that is more peaceful.
So, what does being a peacebuilding club mean? How does our club collaborate to make peace more likely in our community? There is no rigid and hardline criteria to become a peacebuilding club. However, generally, being a peacebuilding club means a club such as ours will:
- Form a club peace committee to give peace greater visibility within the club;
- Support one or more projects that involve peace as an explicit theme, with a hoped-for particular emphasis on youth;
- Partner with other Rotary clubs to promote peace; and
- Hopefully, nominate candidates to one of Rotary’s peace centres, and join the Rotary Action Group for Peace, an Action Group designed to enable Rotarians to learn from each other how to more effectively advance peace.
To date, our club has taken a number of steps to live out our peacebuilding aspiration. These include:
- We have invited a number of speakers to our club who have an explicit peace objective in their work. Our November speaker Alley McDonald from Community Justice Initiatives was one such example of a focused talk about advancing peace in our local community. Our upcoming speaker on January 27, Laurel Boytim, from The Ripple Effect Education (TREE), is another such example of an exciting local initiative designed to promote peace through our school system. The “founding story” of TREE is intriguing. Ask Laurel about it on Tuesday.
- Second, our club is supporting a District 7080 Rotary Peace Scholarship at the University of Waterloo/Grebel for the Master of Peace and Conflict Studies program that is educating a new generation of peace workers in our community, nation and world.
- Third, our Allocations Committee has invited all potential applicants to think about the “peace impact” of their proposed projects. I have personally been amazed at the underlying, and often unstated, peace vision of the projects our club supports. It is inspiring how each is contributing to making our community better. Stated in negative terms, imagine what our community would be like if none of the school projects and organizations we support existed. Back packs, food programs, picnic tables, gardens, international economic empowerment, etc., all profoundly contribute to building the notion of “peace writ large.” We often just don’t recognize how these thousands of little initiatives make our community more kind, resilient, and peaceful, and the “ripple effect” these efforts have.
So, congratulations on being part of a Rotary club that has chosen to join with other Rotary clubs to explore what peace may mean for our club and community. You are contributing to promoting a community where all can thrive.
There are two specific steps that each of you may want to consider to promote the notion of peace within our club.
- First, think about the peace impact that our club is making in our community. Its profound – we just don’t often think about it in peace terms. The Skate 48 “event,” not only the funds raised by it, is just one of many examples of how we are strengthening civil society in Kitchener Waterloo by bringing together diverse teams and groups of people. So too, are the service opportunities that are organized by our club to assist those who are in need.
- Second, ask every speaker at our meetings “what is the peace impact” of your work? Its profound – we just don’t often think about it in these terms. Our last speaker Dean Shoemaker, from Mennonite Economic Development Associates, was a wonderful example of a “peace project” that never used this term. Each of our upcoming speakers also paint a picture of a more peaceful and just community, nation and world. Ask each about it. You may be surprised.
Dennis Yanke and Lowell Ewert
Peace Committee of Kitchener Grand River