Education For Peace Training Programs
EFP-Academy offers both online and onsite training programs. Currently the following courses are offered:
A- Online Training Programs
- Introduction to Education for Peace (Certificate)
- EFP Professional Diploma
B- Online/Onsite Training Programs
- EFP Mater of Advanced Studies (MAS) (both online and on-site)
C- Onsite Training Programs
Specially designed training programs for your school, institution, agency
What is Education for Peace?
Education for Peace (EFP) is an innovative and integrative “whole school” program that creates violence-free and peaceful school environments conducive to meeting the emotional, social, and intellectual needs of diverse school populations. Through creating peaceful school environments characterized by unity in diversity, EFP harnesses the freeing and healing properties of unity to meet the manifold needs of increasingly diverse populations in different cultural settings. EFP engages students, teachers, parents, and school staff in a cooperative effort to create a violence-free, peaceful school community. The emphasis on peace is based on the fact that peace and education are inseparable aspects of civilization. No civilization is truly progressive without education, and no education system is truly civilizing unless it is based on the universal principles of peace.
Peace Education and Education for Peace
Peace Education (PE) is a discipline that focuses on teaching students such concepts as human rights, freedom, democracy, and environmental protection, as well as informing them about the negative consequences of conflict and violence and teach them some skills of conflict resolution. Currently, PE is the most common approach to inclusion of the subject of peace in school curricula.
Inaugurated in 2000, Education for Peace (EFP) focuses on helping students, teachers, staff, and parents to become peacemakers by developing inner, interpersonal, and intergroup peace. This goal is accomplished by emphasis on the acquisition of unity-based worldviews founded on universal principles of peace, which form the framework for teaching all subjects of study. EFP Curriculum addresses issues of human rights, freedom, democracy, environmental protection and other peace-related topics and skills in an organic and integrated manner in the context of study of all school subjects.
EFP Principles
Education for Peace (EFP) is based on universal principles of peace affirming that:
Humanity is one;
The oneness of humanity is expressed in diversity;
The greatest opportunity before humanity is to safeguard its oneness and protect its diversity; and
The greatest challenge before humanity is to accomplish this task through peaceful means, with a particular focus on educating every new generation of children and youth according to these principles.
EFP Objectives
The main objectives of the EFP Program is to create in the participating schools:
A Culture of Peace—creating violence-free, bullying-free, harmonious, and peaceful environments throughout the school community;
A Culture of Healing—creating an environment conducive to helping all members of the school community to gradually recover from the negative effects of conflict and violence that they may have experienced and/or experiencing in their lives; and
A Culture of Excellence—creating an environment conducive to excellence in all aspects of the lives of members of the school community: academic, behavioural, ethical, and relational.
EFP Methodology
EFP engages all members of the school community—students, teachers, administrators, support staff, and parents/guardians (to the extent possible)—in the study and practice of EFP principles in classrooms, school environments, and within the families of the students. As such, EFP helps to create a situation in which every member of the school community is immersed in an environment of peace. Whenever EFP is introduced to a new school community, the basic EFP curriculum is adapted to the specific needs and realities of that community. This task is approached with the full participation and involvement of educators from the host community. EFP Programs are introduced in every new community at the invitation of the host community.
EFP Facts
EFP-International (Canada) is a research, training, implementation, and consultancy agency registered under the laws of Canada as a not-for-profit, independent, peace-based community service organization without political, religious, or ethnic affiliation.
EFP is one of the largest, sustained peace-based education program ever undertaken.
EFP Integrative Curriculum, based on a decade of research & implementation, currently comprises 11 volumes.
EFP has proven to be effective in different contexts such as schools in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, the United States, Mexico, and Bermuda.
EFP has been the subject of systematic research and evaluation by scholars and experts in the field, and their findings have been published in academic journals.
EFP-International initially administers EFP Programs in a new community. However, as soon as the program is well established, a local EFP entity is formed to administer the program.
Appreciations
“The children all over the world are in need of peace and security. On the occasion of the Summit devoted to the children, we recommend this program [EFP] to all the nations for consideration, as a model of society oriented towards peace, cooperation, and development.”
— From a letter addressed to the Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly on Children (8–10 May 2002) by the Government of Bosnia and Herzegovina
“This is a unique project. It will teach how to create a violence-free environment, in homes and schools and in the country as a whole.”
—The Senior Deputy High Representative, Ambassador Dr. Matei Hoffmann, 28 June 2000
“This invaluable project was conceived in such a way that the soul-searching process of reflection which the participants undergo as the project unfolds—be they pupils, teachers, parents, administrators, ordinary school workers—results, largely speaking, as we have ascertained ourselves, in a heightened holistic awareness of the war period and its tragic consequences, and indeed triggers the desire amongst them to become authentic peace-makers, and precisely provides them with the necessary tools to achieve this goal….”
— Claude Kieffer Senior Education Advisor, Office of the High Representative, BiH (2002)
“As a result of participating in the EFP project, my way of teaching has changed, my relationships with students has changed, and my relationship with my family has changed… all for the better.” —Teacher, Secondary School, BiH (2001)
“This project has changed our vision and worldview. I feel that the vision of every teacher and student in this school has been in some way changed through this project.”
— Literature Teacher, High School, BiH (2002)
“Before this project things were imposed in our classes, but with EFP we do it because we love it.” — Student, Primary School, BiH (2003)
“As an American peace worker, I often find myself internally torn asunder by my role in a country (and a world) that seems to thrive in a state of violent conflict. The question I constantly wrestle with is: How do I bridge the gap between living out Martin Luther King, Jr.’s call to righteous indignation and Gandhi’s challenge to ‘be the change I wish to see in the world’? …For the past few months, I have been taught that conflict is unavoidable and is only destructive when one is unable to transform it in positive ways. Dr. Danesh’s rejection of this model and his proposal of UNITY as an alternative was quite invigorating. Personally, I find that working toward unity is much more life-giving than is conflict transformation.”
—Robert Rivers, MA student, European University Centre for Peace & Conflict Studies (2005)
“The EFP experience for the faculty of Boulder Prep was quite interesting. As the faculty began to see how students being taught from the perspective of peace in all subjects could cause dramatic changes in the outlook of our youth, the faculty themselves began to experience the beginnings of a paradigm shift. A paradigm shift, the whole world but especially our schools worldwide need to experience.”
—Andre Adeli, Co-Founder/Co-Director, Boulder Preparatory High School Boulder, Colorado, USA (2006)
“Education for Peace has provided me with a conceptual framework with which to study the world around me. I feel as though I can alter the architecture of my reality without tearing down its walls! In my work as a teacher, my students now take the lead role in developing comparative tools to evaluate their personal growth.”
—Ron Doyle, Instructor, Boulder Preparatory High School Boulder, Colorado, USA (2006)
Following are comments from some of the participants at the first Education for Peace training workshop held in Monterrey, Nueo Leon, Feb 2012:
“Listening to Doctor Danesh developing the concepts related to Education for Peace, is like being in front of an artist who is knitting with different colors. While advancing, everything makes more sense and every color is essential to the full development of the painting that invites to unity and peace. But the work is collective and dynamic, as it also requires that each group/society bring the elements of their own reality to the process so that it can be adapted to their own context. During the workshop he invited us to reflect about our own worldview and at the same time, we were introduced to a road for building a culture of peace. It is about searching for the development of a mature and universal level of consciousness; to favor cooperation and equality; to work for justice; to live in unity. Following this road from the Education for Peace approach, we will be building a sustainable and lasting peace.”
—Dr. Yuri Luis Carlos Sánchez Ríos, Universidad de Monterrey
“I am sure that we will see very positive results, beginning with ourselves”.
—Maria Aurora Acosta Morales, Section 12 of Secretary of Education.
“In the medium term, I wish to belong to the training team representing the Secretary of Education and to be available to promote the program both within the educational community and in the society at large out of the classrooms”.
—Eduardo Valdéz Puente, Human development and social participation of the Secretary of Education
“Excellent workshop, we have an important challenge and we will need support, in the medium run. I can see the implementation will be a success”
—Federico Brull, Director of private school Colegio Cambridge
The International Education for Peace Institute (EFP-International) is a research, training, development, and service institution dedicated to the cause of peace. EFP-International began its work in June 2000 by launching a two-year pilot project of Education for Peace in three primary and three secondary schools in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), with the participation of more than 400 teachers and school staff, 6,000 students and many of their parents/guardians.
By 2006, at the invitation of the Government of Bosnia and Herzegovina and OSCE, the EFP Program has been implemented in some 112 schools with approximately 80,000 students; 5,000 teachers, school staff, and administrators; and thousands of parents/guardians. Currently (2012), we are half-way in a 6-year program to incorporate the EFP Curriculum into the BiH education reform process, thus involving all BiH schools with about .5 million students and 70,000 teachers in the study of all subjects from grades K–12 within the parameters of peace. All thirteen Ministries of Education, ten Pedagogical Institutes, and eight universities in Bosnia and Herzegovina are active partners in this mammoth undertaking. EFP Programs are now being gradually introduced into schools in Bermuda, Canada, Mexico,the United States and plans are underway for their introduction into schools in several other countries.
Contact Information
director@efp.pathwisedev.ca www.efp.pathwisedev.ca