Peace Education: A Working Definition

What is Peace Education?

Peace Education means to learn about and to learn for peace.

Learning about peace means obtaining knowledge and understanding of what contributes to peace, what damages it, what leads to war, what does 'peace' mean on each level anyway, what is my role in it, and how are the different levels connected?

Learning for peace means learning the skills, attitudes and values that one needs in order to contribute to peace and help maintain it. For example, this means learning to deal with conflicts without the recourse to violence, learning to think creatively, learning to apply the methods of active non  violence or learning to deal with cultural differences in a constructive way.

Service Civil International has adopted a 2004 – 2009 Strategic Plan. One of the objectives of this plan is to Improve the Quality and Level of Peace Education within SCI - Workcamps will have more planned education sessions where volunteers will be made aware of SCI as a broad peace movement.

The Peace Education network facilitates the sharing of Peace Education resources, and the Space for Peace website is a main arm of this network.

Peace Education Working Definition

You can also download here a working paper written by some SCI  activists outlining what peace education means to them.