Peace Is What People Do
I don’t live in Israel-Palestine.
What I can do to advance local peacebuilding?
Who We Are
We are an international network driven by the belief that sustainable peace is cultivated by local efforts that reach diverse constituencies. We are university students, nonprofit professionals, educators, community organizers, and academics who have come to learn that individuals and communities outside of Israel-Palestine can play a significant role in building capacity and creating meaningful change. Our central commitment is to cultivate opportunities for Constructive Solidarity with local peacebuilders.
Why Embodying Peace?
Volunteers are the lifeblood of civil society. For the field of civil society peacebuilding in Israel-Palestine, Embodying Peace expands the circle of volunteers that contribute to the capacity-building of locally-led efforts. We establish remote volunteer opportunities and recruit volunteers around the world to contribute their skills, expertise, and networks to advance the needs of our partner organizations. We recruit volunteers around the world so local organizations can make a greater impact through their on-the-ground initiatives.
Our international volunteer network works across diverse civil society peacebuilding organizations in Israel-Palestine in order to address and satisfy the strategic needs of individual organizations and of the field as a unit.
Civil society peacebuilding organizations are beset by numerous challenges to their basic functioning and growth. Embodying Peace focuses on two widespread areas of deficit: staffing and professional development. We identify the scarcities in civil society organizations and transform them into opportunities for impactful volunteer capacity.
Our theory of social change is to expand the circle of volunteers that contributes to the capacity-building efforts of locally-led peacebuilding organizations by recruiting internationals for remote volunteering opportunities which accomplish administrative tasks and satisfy strategic goals that would have otherwise been impossible or stalled. By assessing their needs and connecting them to a diverse network of volunteers, we help our partner organizations bridge gaps in skill sets and staff bandwidth.
By increasing the bandwidth of local civil society organizations, we alleviate a critical obstacle to their basic functioning and growth. In the long-term, increased bandwidth generates increased impact of their programs and more evidence of theories of social change.
Mission
Embodying Peace utilizes remote volunteer capacity to support civil society peacebuilding efforts in Israel-Palestine. We match individuals seeking to amplify locally-led efforts with opportunities to advance the strategic needs of civil society organizations. Our educational offerings enable our volunteers to gain fluency in the field which their efforts seek to amplify.
Vision
We believe that the road to sustainable peace in Israel-Palestine will be paved by local civil society efforts. Embodying Peace invites people around the world to help pave this road. Our vision is to organize a global community that contributes skills, expertise, and networks to strengthen the infrastructure for nonviolent grassroots change.
Civil Society Peacebuilding
We define civil society peacebuilding as civilian-led efforts that mobilize individuals, communities, and governments in order to transform realities of violence into social and political infrastructure that promotes equality, human rights, and the right to self-determination. It is the process of overcoming the attitudes, behaviors, and systems that breed dehumanization through collective action. The diversity of our partner organizations—in terms of theories of social change and target constituencies—reflects our view that the field of peacebuilding must seek to address the permeation of violent conflict into all facets of society.
Constructive Solidarity
We coined the term Constructive Solidarity to describe our commitment to establish action-centered partnership with local activists. The opposite of constructive solidarity is ideological solidarity, what may often be considered solidarity merely in name. Our embrace of Constructive Solidarity is a challenge we have set for ourselves. It demands that we seek out ways to contribute effectively; that we know our partner organizations deeply; and that we ask ourselves continuously, “How are we striving to build peace?” Most importantly, it demands that we see our agency in the process of making peace not only possible but manifest for all. And so: Peace is what people do. It is what we must do, what we must embody in deeds.