Developing educators for peace
Kate Morris (Arts ‘21), first got involved with the Center for Peacemaking and Peace Works during the fall of her freshman year and “absolutely fell in love with the program.” Throughout her freshman and sophomore years, Kate worked with Peace Works in a variety of Milwaukee schools. Her love of the program led her to declare a Peace Studies minor.
“Working with Peace Works is a really cool way for me to continue learning peacemaking skills myself, while also having a leadership role and seeing the lessons ‘click’ for the kids,” Kate said. It is this experience that led to Kate’s interest in applying for a student peacemaking fellowship to complete a three week summer internship with the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Little Friends for Peace.
Kate worked directly with the organization’s co-founder, MJ Park, and other staff to run week-long summer Peace Camps for youth.
Like the Center’s Peace Works program, Little Friends for Peace aims to counter violence and contribute to a worldwide culture of peace by sharing skills to prevent, resolve, and transform conflict with individuals, families, teams, and communities.
“The similarities between the Peace Camp lessons and our Peace Works curriculum were very evident and made me much more confident as a counselor and team leader,” Kate said.
Kate also got to learn about the administrative side of the organization. She attended and helped MJ present at the International Youth Peace Forum as well as a workshop at the Sojourners Fellowship house. Through these presentations, Kate found that the core values and teachings from the two peace education programs are applicable to people of all ages.
Of her fellowship experience as a whole, Kate said: “I found myself getting extremely inspired to not only bring what I learned back to the Peace Works program to help construct new lessons or new ways to teach about certain subjects, but also to better the peacemaking tools that I have personally.”
“Things like being a ‘bucket-filler’ instead of a ‘bucket-tipper’ are going to continue to stick in my mind while I deal with things in my own life, and also when working with youth in Milwaukee.”
