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What is peace—and how do we build it?
How can we create a shared future where everybody belongs.
In this episode, Monica Curca talks about peace and why it involves all of us…Why we’re all responsible to solve violence. And why power is found in relationship.
Monica founded Activate Labs, a nonprofit organization that builds a creative force for peace and justice. Her projects bring together the ingredients for joy to enable direct, structural and cultural peacebuilding.
As a refugee herself and someone who holds two master’s degrees in sustainable international development and conflict and coexistence, Monica is perfectly poised to help us pursue a lens of peace.
Show highlights include:
- Returning to Myself: As a refuge from Romania, Monica discovered that belonging was a challenge and social exclusion still existed.
- What a collective future looks like: Involves everybody, including those impacted by conflict and violence; restore relationships and ask for forgiveness.
- Current State of Peace: Where violence is not; define violence and what causes it to understand peace.
- Rapid Response Creative Trauma Healing Spaces: Role of creativity in building peace is creating safe spaces to be open, vulnerable and engage with others.
- How to feed and support souls during trauma: Go beyond dialogue to include arts and music, even face painting.
- Provide communication and other tools to communities to understand, analyze and solve violence.
- The Salvation Army can become a part of a system that analyzes violence and collaborates with communities to build peace, trust and a shared future.
- Call to Action: Step outside your comfort zone; get to know “others”—the lonely, misfits, homeless and so on.
Good words from Monica Curca in this show:
“Our hope is to create communities where everybody belongs.”
“What peace is the state where violence is not. I think we have to define violence to understand what peace is.”
“People’s resilience and people’s hope was just as important as eating, and that’s what arts and creativity can do.”
“Everybody’s involved in violence, whether we support it, whether we ignore it, whether we experience it, whether we do it. If we live on this planet, we can’t get away from it. We’re all responsible to solve it, too.”
Additional resources:
- Activate Labs
- Johan Galtung’s Peace Matrix
- Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
- Author John Paul Lederach
- Alliance for Peacebuilding
- Visit westernusa.salvationarmy.org to join the fight for good in your community.
- What’s your story? Take our free email course to see why your voice matters and how to find your story.
Download this episode wherever you get your podcasts. Connect with Monica Curca via Activate Labs.
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