We are celebrating Labor Day today in the United States, a day dedicated to the social and economic achievements of the everyday efforts of American workers. What better day to share my thoughts on a book I’ve been reading on the lives of us, the development laborers?

Inside the Everyday Lives of Development…

Are you a budding filmmaker, or simply somebody who is passionate about bringing about positive change in the world? Then why not enter the Encompass Trust “Superheroes for Peace” competition?!

Here at Encompass we believe that it is the little things that we do in life that make the difference. Whether it’s giving someone a smile or helping a neighbour with their shopping, it’s the little acts that make us all heroes in the global battle to bring world peace!…

The newest PeaceMedia resource, a video published by the United Nations on the star fruit industry in Indonesia, demonstrates the effect that oil and gas companies can have on a local population and environment.  As someone who is very interested in corporate social responsibility and stakeholder engagement, I find this particular video compelling. It speaks of the high expectations for wealth that extractive industries bring to areas, but it also talks about the effects that these companies…

• President Karzai of Afghanistan confronted the Pakistani leadership on Thursday during a visit to Islamabad, accusing Pakistani officials of harbouring the Taliban; he also was quoted as saying there were secret contacts between the US, Afghan governments and the Taliban, and that the…

• Human Rights Watch released a report accusing Myanmar/Burma and its army of continuing a “systematic repression” of citizens, including the use of anti-personnel landmines, child soldiers, forced labour, extrajudicial killings, sexual violence and the use of human shields, despite the government’s promise of reform and ceasefire agreements with some ethnic armed…

• Relatives of inmates on a hunger strike in Kyrgyzstanpicketed a pretrial detention centre on Wednesday to demand their relatives’ demands be met. The protesters are calling upon reviews for the inmates’ cases, who they claim have been sentenced for crimes they didn’t commit. On Tuesday, the Kyrgyz Parliament…

• A US citizen was jailed by authorities in Thailand for translating excerpts of a locally banned biography of the King and posting them online. On Friday, the former PM was being questioned by police in connection with a deadly military crackdown on the “Red Shirt” mass opposition protests that…

To the community,

I am posting this in hopes of starting a great partnership between my upcoming feature documentary The Peace Agency and organizations that are committed to empowering women and ending conflict.

The Peace Agency is about a grassroots women’s school for peace and equality in the conflict zone of Poso, Indonesia. Featured in the film is Lian Gogali, the founder of the school, who faces seemingly insurmountable professional and personal struggles…

When Carol arrived to the village in rural Indonesia to begin her anthropological dissertation research, she was shocked at the frequency of “feasts” that took place in the village. This was not a phenomenon she had come to study, and frankly, she became a bit annoyed at how she perceived it “disrupted” village life, and presumably her work. They would involve everyone and much effort and time went into these all-day events.



Carol shared, in the qualitative research methods class…

Before a crowd of thousands of Poso residents in late 2009, roughly three years after Christian-Muslim violence in the region had ended, Poso district head Piet Inkiriwang extolled the virtues of investment. ‘If investors come to Poso, we will all shower in money,’ he told the crowd. ‘You’ll have bucketloads.’ These buckets of money were to come from new jobs and compensation payments for land that investors would need.

Economic development is essential to rebuild Poso. But investment…

Just wanted to let everyone know that an exciting new internship opportunity has been created by the Global Minded Internship Program of RACI. New interns will create an eco-tourism project for sustainable livelihoods in the post-conflict zone of Poso, Indonesia. To learn more about this please visit:

http://spottedfrogproductions.com/jobs.html

AND

 …

Communities have the capacity to take action, based on their strengths, to realize their dreams. Constellation Support Teams develop and nurture the capacity of communities to facilitate communal discussion, reflection, learning and action. They accompany communities on their journey to their…

The Peace Portal is holding an exciting competition for stories of peace building around the world. The top 25 stories will make it into a book about peacemaking 2.0! Here is the entry for Institute Mosintuwu, a grassroots movement for women and children in Poso, Sulawesi. 

"Consult conventional history of the brutal communal conflict that lasted from 1998-2007 in Poso, on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia, and prospects for a lasting peace…

I’m currently in Santa Fe, New Mexico and this weekend I stopped in at a favorite place of mine here, the Museum of International Folk Art. A current exhibit, “The Arts of Survival: Folk Expression in the Face of Disaster,” had caught my eye and I wanted to check it out.…

Take a second to check out this trailer for the new documentary "The Peace Agency"

http://vimeo.com/27524256

When the war ends, a woman's fight begins.



An extraordinary grassroots school is being held on a woman's front porch in the post-conflict zone of Poso, Indonesia. Lian Gogali is teaching female survivors of nearly a decade of communal violence how to transform themselves into agents of peace for their…

Indonesia’s transition to democracy since 1998 has been marred by the eruption of internal conflicts. A new study entitled Conflict Management in Indonesia – An Analysis of the Conflict in Maluku, Papua and Poso suggests this transition has had a direct impact on the way these conflicts are being managed.

The…