Think You Can Change the World? We Do! And You Can!
A Zoom Conversation wih Chip Hauss ’69, Senior Fellow at The Alliance for Peacebuilding
Today, most Obies—like most Americans—know their country is in trouble. They worry that our country is caught in a downward spiral that puts everything, including our democracy, in peril and want to know what they can do to “change the world.” Chip Hauss ’69 and his colleagues at the Alliance for Peacebuilding have launched the “Peacebuilding Starts at Home” movement to connect people to organizations that are working to build peace and prevent conflict in their communities and beyond, as well as developing activities if nothing exists. Join Chip as he presents the team’s vision and strategy and draws highlights from his just released book Peacebuilding Starts At Home: How You Can Make It Happen to identify ways you can channel your concerns and apply your Oberlin values and become part of the network to build a more just and harmonious society.
The Alliance for Peacebuilding (AfP) is an award-winning nonprofit and nonpartisan network of almost 300 organizations working in 181 countries to prevent and reduce violent conflict and build sustainable peace. AfP cultivates a network to strengthen and advance the peacebuilding field, enabling peacebuilding organizations to achieve greater impact—tackling issues too large for any one organization to address alone.
In 2015, AfP began analyzing and addressing conflict dynamics in the United States and the Global North—believing it is hypocritical to tell people in countries “over there” how to prevent and reduce conflict, violence, and instability if we cannot do it here. AfP is working to mobilize policy and lawmakers, the private sector, and everyday Americans to champion practical and actionable conflict prevention and peacebuilding programs, from the community to the national level. But peace doesn’t just happen, we must build it. Anyone can learn to build peace and prevent conflict (it doesn’t take hours of classes) and spark change in your home, school, community, online, and beyond. From building trust at the dinner table to cultivating compassion in schools and workplaces, “tiny islands of change” can connect and grow into a cultural movement with global reach.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Charles “Chip” Hauss ’69 has spent more than fifty years as an author, activist, and mentor. He currently serves as Senior Fellow for Innovation at AfP where he helps lead its Peacebuilding Starts at Home initiative. He is the author of nineteen books in political science and peace studies that explore how large-scale social and political change occur. Chip majored in Government at Oberlin and earned a PhD from the University of Michigan.
