Global Initiatives

Southeast Asia
In response to escalating violence and terrorism in Indonesia, Plowshares and the Indonesian Ministry of Justice and Human Rights are training 3,600 senior leaders from the government and civil society to more effectively address conflict, protect human rights, and promote democratic participation.

Plowshares partners with the Center for Empowering Reconciliation with Peace to address ethnic and religious conflict in volatile areas. Collaboration with the Center and other regional organizations has equipped more than 400 regional peacebuilders, published the Peace Skills curriculum, and sent multi-faith teams to conflicted areas.

North America
Plowshares applies models of conflict transformation from South Africa and Indonesia to work with clergy, city councils, and civic organizations in U.S. cities from Hartford to Los Angeles. Partner centers in several of these cities offer training in conflict transformation and mediation.

Southern and East Africa
Plowshares equips community leaders and trainers to proactively address conflicts in cooperation with Mediation and Transformation Practice and the Centre for Conflict Resolution at the University of Cape Town. Plowshares conducts peacebuilding training at the request of government, civic and religious organizations in South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.

Mainland China and Hong Kong
Plowshares provides consultation and training programs focused on public dialogue, sustainable development, and concensus building, in partnership with Civic Exchange, the YMCA, universities, seminaries, and chambers of commerce. Over the last decade, Plowshares programs have engaged more than 300 leaders from parliament, civil service, social science academies, and non-governmental organizations from Beijing, Hong Kong, Nanjing, and Shanghai.

Plowshares Uganda Medical Program
The Ugandan rural health program, under the leadership of Sister Ephrance and a number of traditional birth attendants (TBAs), runs a number of small rural clinics that deliver medical care to villages in need.  The clinics are powerful symbols of the faith and ingenuity of the Ugandan people.  Some communities have constructed roads by hand in order to get to their village the simple but heavy medical equipment such as a propane powered refrigerator needed to store immunizations.  The small but sturdy clinics have been constructed with bricks the villagers, primarily the women, have made by hand. As the word of the effectiveness of one clinic spreads  to a neighboring village, the first village supports the next in enlisting TBA's to enter the birth, malaria and AIDS information courses, and the women  who have experienced the tremendous benefits of their own health clinic help their neighbors build their own clinic.  

Latin America and the Caribbean
Plowshares works with religious, academic, and civic representatives to equip leaders with skills in conflict transformation through ongoing partnerships with the University of the West Indies, the Cuban Council of Churches and academic and community centers in Brazil and Peru. Plowshares work to enhance relations between the US and Cuba through a number of projects including a new proposed initiative that would work both in South Florida and Cuba providing trainings in human rights and conflict transformation.  Two recent traveling seminars also took steps to increase understanding between Americans and Cubans through person-to-person dialogue and meetings with Cuban leaders.
 
Plowshares has recently partnered with the Center for Christian Reflection and Dialogue to offer more extensive training in conflict transformation to religious and civic leaders.  Planning and fundraising is underway for concentrated trainings in 2006 and 2007.

More detailed information on Plowshares programs is available by contacting us by e-mail.