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Center for Dialogue and Conflict Transformation

“WELCOME FROM THE DIRECTOR”

As the African quote reminds us, “if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” The Center for Dialogue and Conflict Transformation seeks to engage with LCC students, staff, local and international researchers, practitioners, activists, and communities to promote and strengthen a culture of peace both locally and globally.  We invite you to join us on our journey towards building peace.

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Naomi Enns
Director, Center for Dialogue and Conflict Transformation

Purpose statement

LCC’s peace center, grounded in Christian faith, offers opportunities for building bridges of trust, transforming relationships, and equipping communities. The center aims to strengthen, transform, and sustain servant change agents towards the creation of a more just and peaceful world. Opportunities for gathering and growing together strengthens the LCC ethos of non-violent peacebuilding guided by 4 pillars articulated below. These pillars advance our understanding and action towards peace in local and global pathways through dialogue, trainings, and action. The Center is a catalyst for strengthening communities in nonviolent social change, generous hospitality, and holistic justice to promote the greater common good of our society.

Conflict Transformation & Resilience

We work with people to transform conflict on personal, interpersonal, community and societal levels by building bridges of trust, fostering reconciliation, and strengthening resiliency. Through respectful engagement we equip communities to live justly and nurture a sustainable peace. 

Applied Research & Dialogue

We work with students and researchers in the areas of conflict and peace studies and promote events that stimulate dialogue on critical issues that impact our world.  The goal is to invite students, international researchers, and others to connect academic research to practice.

Action, Advocacy & Awareness Raising

We challenge a culture of oppression, promote actions which pursue justice, increase understanding and engagement in human rights issues, and strengthen positive service and citizenship. We use dialogue, learning events and workshops to empower communities to live generously.

Peace, Dialogue & Trainings

We foster an awareness of the cycles of violence and provide tools to nonviolently engage conflict, oppression, and trauma. We use human encounters to transform relationships, expand our understanding and actions toward peace, and nurture health and healing towards a more just and peaceful world.

News and Events

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Building Peace: Summer Brunch and Dialogue

2023-05-29

Recently on May 29th, our LCC International University community had an amazing opportunity to gather all together one more time during the exciting “Building Peace Summer Brunch and Dialogue event”. LCC’s Center for Dialogue and Conflict Transformation (‘Peace Center’) hosted a beautiful lunch that helped to unite multiple members of our diverse community: current students, faculty members, staff, and even alumni who graduated this past April 2022.We started our event with the process of preparing crêpes (the French version of pancakes ) together and the various delicious toppings for them. The choice of food for a Peace and Dialogue lunch was an obvious connection to the mission and the crucial role of our center. In many cultures, this food option of crepes is directly related to the ideas of warmth, union, and friendships. Crêpes were not only an amazing lunch option with a great message, but also tasty!Spending time and discussing as a community helped nurture ties within our community through mutual discovery of what people valued. After eating the food, everyone present engaged in a specially designed peacebuilding activity called “World Cafe”.  By sharing their ideas around critical questions such as “What does community mean to you?” a rich dialogue entailed. Participants ended up creating 5 unique posters with useful insights, suggestions, and reflective ideas about the future progress and development of  LCC’s “Peace Center” and how we might continue to live into our goal of nurturing a culture of peace that might transform relationships and equip our communities to be agents of change. Solomiia Melnyk, a Ukrainian student in Contemporary Communications, shared her experience about participating in the event, stating “The lunch reminded me how the community brings new ideas into your lives. Sometimes it can be something unexpected. Despite all our differences, we are similar!”

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Shadowing a Peace Actor: What Makes up Home and Identity?

2023-04-04

The Center for Dialogue and Conflict Transformation at LCC International University recently hosted the storytelling peacebuilding performer Raffi Feghali from Lebanon on March 20-21st.  Inviting a peacebuilding actor into a university can be risky. It offers an opportunity for engaging with questions of the heart, head and soul and uncovering what lies behind change. It evokes feelings around our identities and uncovers fears and joys- this can be risky. Yet, engaging with the tough issues of where one belongs, how one can influence community, and what makes up our choices about home is part of the critical work needed to build peace at the grassroots in societies. Where deep divisions exist, seeding hope is about resilience and repair. Yet,  naming our realities clearly, both the joys and the painful ones involving homes and places of suffering where our hearts are in turmoil, leads us towards asking authentic and deep questions about the art of the possible. Building resilience and positive change is also about learning ways to communicate, explore,  and understand our thoughts.  Through Raffi Feghali’ s monodramatic storytelling performance of “Anatomy of a Home”  the LCC community was transported into his Lebanese world and invited on a journey in the search for identity and belonging. One of love and hate. He challenged us in thought provoking ways  as we laughed and cried together about why we choose places to be our home and explored  the challenges of finding meaning in a home where one’s country is falling apart. One could not help but realize the impact that safety and security in our own communities have on life.While at LCC, Raffi explored with students the various ways transformation happens as we perceive and experience life and how we engage with alternatives to conflict solutions that might be envisioned.  During his visit, Varvara Liasun (a communications major, peace center volunteer, and second year student) assisted the great performer, peacebuilder, and coach. She remarks how “ These two days were really busy but I enjoyed every single minute”  as Varvara had opportunities for close up conversations with Raffi over lunch, assisting in small trainings for two classes, and making the stage ready for the performance “Anatomy of Home” itself through LCC’s peace center.In the Introduction to Communication and Media class with Ksenija Ševcova, Raffi worked with the students using ideas  similar to the workshop he led at the Stories Shaping Peace Conference at LCC in 2022 from Theatre of the Oppressed.  First, students were exposed to  theory which for some seemed to be a little hard to understand, but then, it was time for practice. This is where the power of learning took on a new depth.  Quickly, in two groups of seven, students created an image theater about the topics that they were worried about. Most of the students seemed to enjoy this part- even when it was time to leave, they stayed to give feedback and to take a group picture. In the Intercultural communication class, students were offered a similar experience. Enthusiastically, students acted out scenarios around conflicts - their ideas on bullying and new community experiences- asking themselves in what ways they might see the world differently to create new positive outcomes where conflict between people exists.The last but the most exciting part for Varvara  was working on the community wide performance on March 21st. She was a part of set up which included enacting sound system and lighting performance cues during the performance itself.  “ That was basically my first experience” she says “ I was a little nervous, but it was easy to relax because Raffi is the person everyone can easily work with. Even 5 minutes  before the beginning we were having fun.” During lunches Varvara shares, “we discussed ongoing topics, starting with conflicts in the neighboring countries, and finishing by sharing the experience living in the Netherlands. During these discussions I learned a lot even about the topics that I had never had interest in.”   The opportunity to have several  talks about life,  gleaning pieces of advice for my future learning,  from Raffi’s wisdom and experience was something that “ was a precious experience that I will never forget.” Raffi Feghali shared afterwards how “it was wonderful to be there again! I am already looking forward to the next one!”Through the layers of his own journey in life, Raffi exposed again the pain of being a citizen  and the choices one feels forced to make in a country where livelihoods and security are threatened from both visible and structural violence;  choices that often lead to displacement. Students who could resonate easily with his questions about home and belonging gathered around him after the performance to continue the conversation. As Raffi Feghali reflected on his visit he shared “I have found out the most impactful growth processes I have gone through have been when I was a the edge of my comfort zone: not too comfortable, not too scared. So, I try to create such environments for other people in hope that would work for them too.”His willingness to dive deep and share the threads that make up life for the many who have found themselves in this reality only reconfirms why we need to work at finding ways to make home a place of peace and belonging for all. And even more important, to find ways to repair and rebuild lives when they need to find a new place to belong to and to call home. This is not an easy task.  Raffi Fegahli challenges one to take risks and ask the deeper questions. “How might you or I make home a place of hospitality and not fear- where people feel welcome and wanted and able to live fully? In what ways are we weaving in "the art of the possible" and the seedling of hope where trust needs repairing, and the beauty of home remains fragile? There are no simple answers.  As a world community, how do we work at holding the social fabric of society together rather than unravel it through violence in order to build a culture of peace?

Peace Conference “Living with Fragile Identities”

February 29-March 3, 2024

This European Peace Conference will be held at LCC. Further information to be posted by September 2023.

Past Events

the opening conference for the center offered 3 strands of critical thinking on the theme of narratives, the place of storytelling and their role in healing and building a democratic society. Be engaging with our heads, hearts and hands we nurtured our walk together towards peace.

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