In 2024, the NPA rekindled its strategic partnership with the International Institute on Peace Education (IIPE) and the Global Campaign for Peace Education (GCPE). The two global initiatives in peace education share NPA’s mission to “catalyze, and make accessible holistic and integrative learning and research for peace, and to elevate in the public consciousness the meaning and value of peacebuilding and everyone’s role in it.” Tony Jenkins, NPA Trustee, serves as the Managing Director of the IIPE and Coordinator of the GCPE.
NPA now serves as the 501c3 fiscal sponsor of both initiatives, providing administrative support that assures the IIPE & GCPE can focus on the achievement of their visions. In-turn, IIPE & GCPE seek to elevate the work of the NPA within their respective communities.
International Institute on Peace Education
The International Institute on Peace Education is a weeklong residential experience for educators hosted in a different country every other summer. The Institute facilitates exchanges of theory and practical experiences in teaching peace education and serves to grow the field. In serving the field, the IIPE operates as an applied peace education laboratory that provides a space for pedagogical experimentation; cooperative, deep inquiry into shared issues; and advancing theoretical, practical and pedagogical applications.
Since its inauguration at Teachers College Columbia University in 1982, the IIPE has brought together experienced and aspiring educators, academics, professional workers, and activists in the field of peace education from around the world to exchange knowledge and experiences and learn with and from each other in its intensive residentially based learning community. The IIPE is held annually at various universities and peace centers throughout the world.
Also an opportunity for networking and community building, the IIPE has spawned a variety of collaborative research projects and peace education initiatives at the local, regional, and international levels.
The 2024 International Institute on Peace Education (IIPE) was held in Nagakort, Nepal from July 21-28 2024. The Institute was organized by the IIPE Secretariat in partnership with a network of former IIPE participants in Nepal and various local NGOs. IIPE 2024: Nepal convened educators from around the globe for a week-long, residential, learning community experience in peace education. A rich exchange of peacebuilding research, academic theory, best practices, and actions was shared by participants from around the world through IIPE’s evolving dialogical, cooperative, and intersubjective modes of reflective inquiry and experiential learning.
Global Campaign for Peace Education
The Global Campaign for Peace Education (GCPE) was an outcome at the Hague Appeal for Peace conference in May 1999. The GCPE is a global movement of individual peace educators and education NGOs committed to fostering cultures of peace through peace education. Campaign members work in their respective contexts, and through their respective capacities, toward the achievement of the goals of the campaign. Members seek to disseminate and advance peace education in their own localities while engaging, when possible, in transnational cooperation toward addressing global threats to peace.
Campaign Goals
The Global Campaign for Peace Education seeks to foster a culture of peace in communities around the world. It has two goals:
- to build public awareness and political support for the introduction of peace education into all spheres of education, including non-formal education, in all schools throughout the world
- to promote the education of all teachers to teach for peace
Vision: No Peace without Peace Education
The GCPE was called for by participants of the Hague Appeal for Peace Civil Society Conference in May 1999 with this founding vision:
A culture of peace will be achieved when citizens of the world understand global problems; have the skills to resolve conflict constructively; know and live by international standards of human rights, gender and racial equality; appreciate cultural diversity; and respect the integrity of the Earth. Such learning cannot be achieved without intentional, sustained and systematic education for peace.
