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The five-week certificate course on Peace Leadership will explore the intersection of peacebuilding and leadership by engaging with a four-quadrant peace leadership model developed by youth from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Vietnam. You’ll have the opportunity to learn the basics of several peace leadership skills: nonviolent communication, circle-keeping, and conflict assessment and connect these skills to contemporary issues such as identity, technology, the pandemic, climate change, and political polarization. Peace leadership is practice-based, holistic, reflexive, and highly contextual. As such, come prepared for an interactive and hands-on learning experience.
This certificate is open to the public! Last day to register is October 1, 2021.
About the Certificate Series
This series will follow the following themes:
- Week One - October 4: Introduction & Peace Within
What is peace leadership and how does it relate to me? This session will introduce the topic of peace leadership, looking at examples of peace leadership from around the globe. We’ll learn about a four-quadrant peace leadership model developed by Southeast Asian youth, which will be used throughout this course. We’ll then dive into the first quadrant, leading peace within. We’ll consider how our stories, identities, and self-knowledge, including our positionality, form a foundation for honing our peace leadership wisdom and skills. - Week Two - October 11: Interpersonal Peace
What does peace leadership look like in the interpersonal context? This session will explore how we can deepen our relationships with others and transform conflicts that arise in our lives. You’ll learn the basics of nonviolent communication and have a chance to practice it with your classmates. - Week Three - October 18: Sustaining Peaceful Communities
In this session we’ll turn our attention to communities. What constitutes peace in a community, and how can we make substantive contributions towards sustainable peace in communities? Participants will learn about restorative justice and circle-keeping processes and how they can be utilized as a tool for strengthening communities of practice. - Week Four - October 25 - Leading Peace in the World
Building off of our peace leadership foundation from the first three sessions, we’ll now shift our gaze to the greater world that we inhabit and share. This session will introduce conflict assessment tools, which can be used to diagnose and potentially intervene in conflicts. - Week Five - November 1- Reflection & Final Deliverables
The final class will offer an opportunity for participants to share their final deliverables. This session will also provide space for reflection and critical engagement of the concepts, framing, and practices of peace leadership explored in the course.
How to Earn the Certificate
- Attend all 5 sessions
- Complete 1 of 4 deliverables
- Option 1: Complete a personal peace leadership plan using the four-quadrant model developed in this course. You’re encouraged to visually present the actions you plan to take in each of the quadrants. Due Before Session 5
- Option 2: Complete a conflict assessment using one of the conflict assessment tools that we introduced in Session 4. You can choose to focus on any conflict you like, at any level of society (i.e. individual, community, national/international). Due Before Session 5
- Option 3: Try using nonviolent communication in your daily life and then write a reflection (400-500 words) on your experience including what you learned and any intentions you may have for using nonviolent communication in the future. Due Before Session 5
- Option 4: Make a brief video (1-3 min) of yourself articulating your own personal theory of peace leadership. Draw from your own experiences and the wisdom of your own community, however you may define that. Due Before Session 5
- Share your deliverables during week five
Meet the Facilitator
Wesley Hedden is a PhD student in Peace Studies and Sociology at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame in the United States, where he is exploring social media's impact on interethnic and inter-religious conflict in Southeast Asia. From 2006-2020, Wesley lived in Southeast Asia and founded Sarus, a peacebuilding organization that has run 15 exchange programs between Cambodia and Vietnam, and Bangladesh and Myanmar for over 200 youth leaders. Wesley speaks Spanish, Vietnamese, Khmer, Tagalog, and Burmese. He was a Princeton-in-Asia (PiA) fellow in 2006, a Rotary Peace Fellow in 2016, and an East-West Center Asia Pacific Leadership Program fellow in 2016. He earned a BA from Tulane University and an MA in Applied Conflict Transformation Studies from the Paññasastra University of Cambodia.
The five-week certificate course on Peace Leadership will explore the intersection of peacebuilding and leadership by engaging with a four-quadrant peace leadership model developed by youth from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Vietnam. You’ll have the opportunity to learn the basics of several peace leadership skills: nonviolent communication, circle-keeping, and conflict assessment and connect these skills to contemporary issues such as identity, technology, the pandemic, climate change, and political polarization. Peace leadership is practice-based, holistic, reflexive, and highly contextual. As such, come prepared for an interactive and hands-on learning experience.
This certificate is open to the public! Last day to register is October 1, 2021.
About the Certificate Series
This series will follow the following themes:
- Week One - October 4: Introduction & Peace Within
What is peace leadership and how does it relate to me? This session will introduce the topic of peace leadership, looking at examples of peace leadership from around the globe. We’ll learn about a four-quadrant peace leadership model developed by Southeast Asian youth, which will be used throughout this course. We’ll then dive into the first quadrant, leading peace within. We’ll consider how our stories, identities, and self-knowledge, including our positionality, form a foundation for honing our peace leadership wisdom and skills. - Week Two - October 11: Interpersonal Peace
What does peace leadership look like in the interpersonal context? This session will explore how we can deepen our relationships with others and transform conflicts that arise in our lives. You’ll learn the basics of nonviolent communication and have a chance to practice it with your classmates. - Week Three - October 18: Sustaining Peaceful Communities
In this session we’ll turn our attention to communities. What constitutes peace in a community, and how can we make substantive contributions towards sustainable peace in communities? Participants will learn about restorative justice and circle-keeping processes and how they can be utilized as a tool for strengthening communities of practice. - Week Four - October 25 - Leading Peace in the World
Building off of our peace leadership foundation from the first three sessions, we’ll now shift our gaze to the greater world that we inhabit and share. This session will introduce conflict assessment tools, which can be used to diagnose and potentially intervene in conflicts. - Week Five - November 1- Reflection & Final Deliverables
The final class will offer an opportunity for participants to share their final deliverables. This session will also provide space for reflection and critical engagement of the concepts, framing, and practices of peace leadership explored in the course.
How to Earn the Certificate
- Attend all 5 sessions
- Complete 1 of 4 deliverables
- Option 1: Complete a personal peace leadership plan using the four-quadrant model developed in this course. You’re encouraged to visually present the actions you plan to take in each of the quadrants. Due Before Session 5
- Option 2: Complete a conflict assessment using one of the conflict assessment tools that we introduced in Session 4. You can choose to focus on any conflict you like, at any level of society (i.e. individual, community, national/international). Due Before Session 5
- Option 3: Try using nonviolent communication in your daily life and then write a reflection (400-500 words) on your experience including what you learned and any intentions you may have for using nonviolent communication in the future. Due Before Session 5
- Option 4: Make a brief video (1-3 min) of yourself articulating your own personal theory of peace leadership. Draw from your own experiences and the wisdom of your own community, however you may define that. Due Before Session 5
- Share your deliverables during week five
Meet the Facilitator
Wesley Hedden is a PhD student in Peace Studies and Sociology at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame in the United States, where he is exploring social media's impact on interethnic and inter-religious conflict in Southeast Asia. From 2006-2020, Wesley lived in Southeast Asia and founded Sarus, a peacebuilding organization that has run 15 exchange programs between Cambodia and Vietnam, and Bangladesh and Myanmar for over 200 youth leaders. Wesley speaks Spanish, Vietnamese, Khmer, Tagalog, and Burmese. He was a Princeton-in-Asia (PiA) fellow in 2006, a Rotary Peace Fellow in 2016, and an East-West Center Asia Pacific Leadership Program fellow in 2016. He earned a BA from Tulane University and an MA in Applied Conflict Transformation Studies from the Paññasastra University of Cambodia.
