Making Peace Visible

Social entrepreneurs are a unique breed of people, capable of conjuring up a vision, a new way of doing something, a solution to a problem; but they also have the skill and the determination to overcome all the obstacles to implement their vision. John Marks is a remarkable social entrepreneur who, with his wife Susan Collins Marks, built the largest peace building organization in the world, Search for Common Ground. When they stepped down from leadership in 2014, Search had 600 full time employees and offices in 35 countries. Search was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018.His new book, From Vision to Action: Remaking the World Through Social Entrepreneurship, explains how he built Search for Common Ground, and what made it so successful. His new book delivers practical guidance on building bridges and creating meaningful change. Of particular interest to us at MPV, John is a remarkable innovator, not only in the production of effective media to promote peaceful solutions to conflicts, but also in the breakthrough ways he found to disseminate the media, and ideas and approaches they celebrated. RESOURCES:Virtual book talk with John Marks with Harvard Law School's Program on Negotiation, September 23, 2024Clips from Common Ground Productions:·       Radio in Burundi: 1:42 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qghsd3-Wpv8·       Children’s TV in Macedonia with Sesame Workshop: 2:04 - https://youtu.be/ifyCYSbHp2A·       Reality Series:  CNN piece on “The President: 2:45 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQFlmUzi6ys·       Adult Drama:  Team trailer:  2:14 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqYVapttDEQ&feature=youtu.be·       PSA:  Ziggy Marley: 0:23 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llinHdw_gdU·       Music Video:  Ring the Bells: 3:38 - https://youtu.be/5Rs94ztNROIMusic in this episode by Joel Cummins, Podington Bear, Xylo-Ziko, and Faszo.  ABOUT THE SHOW The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.orgSupport our work Connect on social:Instagram @makingpeacevisibleLinkedIn @makingpeacevisibleBluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

Imagine living next door to a person who murdered your father, raped your sister, or even killed your child. This was the case for many people in Sierra Leone who endured a  brutal civil war from 1991 to 2002: the majority of the 50,000 who died were those killed by their own neighbors. While working with a program that facilitates ritual reconciliation processes in Sierra Leone, a process known as fambul tok (or “family talk”), peacebuilder and philanthropist Libby Hoffman learned that justice for Sierra Leonians isn't about punishing or ousting a perpetrator. Rather, justice comes through making the community whole again. “When you hurt somebody, you don't just hurt them; you hurt the community as well,” says Hoffman. In this episode, host Jamil Simon speaks with Libby Hoffman about fambul tok, a process she calls “building peace from the inside out.” Fambul tok is an ancient tradition where disputes are solved through community-wide conversation around a bonfire. In this post-war context, Hoffman and her team facilitated the revival of the practice for Sierra Leonians. Hoffman also documented this remarkable peacebuilding process in her award-winning documentary film Fambul Tok, which has itself catalyzed further reconciliation within Sierra Leone’s war-torn communities. Hoffman's book about her experiences in Sierre Leone is called The Answers Are There: Building Peace from the Inside Out.Libby Hoffman is the founder and President of Catalyst for Peace, a US-based private foundation building peace from the inside-out – creating space for those most impacted by violence to lead in building the peace, supported by healthy, inclusive systems. A former Political Science professor, Hoffman has a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from Tufts’ Fletcher School of Law and a BA in Political Science from Williams College.The film Fambul Tok is available for private viewing through MPV's  Peace Docs initiative. Watch the film here: vimeo.com/26644766. This episode was produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. It was originally published in October 2022. Music by Xylo-Ziko via freemusicarchive.org.  ABOUT THE SHOW The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.orgSupport our work Connect on social:Instagram @makingpeacevisibleLinkedIn @makingpeacevisibleBluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

On July 28, 2024, a teenage boy carried out a fatal stabbing attack on a dance class in Southport, England. Three little girls were killed, and eight other children and two adults were injured. Police arrested and detained the assailant. They didn't release his name, because he was under 18. A user on X posted that the suspect was a Muslim asylum seeker named Ali Al-Shakati. A prominent YouTuber claimed the attacker was an "illegal migrant." As rumors quickly spread on social media, attracting tens of millions of views, Brits on the far right used platforms like X and TikTok to organize violent protests around the country. In one town, a mob started a fire outside a hotel housing asylum seekers and and smashed a glass door, chanting "get them out." In another, demonstrators attacked a mosque. By the end of the next weekend, violent protests had taken place in at least 18 towns and cities, and 147 people had been arrested, as Tortoise reported. When a judge eventually released the attacker's name, Axel Rudakubana, it turned out he neither Muslim not a migrant, but a Christian and the British-born son of Rwandan parents. This is just one of many stories of online misinformation leading to real world harm. Our guest this episode, Lena Slachmuijlder, is working to stop the flow of misinformation in a world where so many get their news from social media. She heads Search for Common Ground's Digital Peacebuilding initiative, which identifies and trains "digital stewards" around the world, people who are trusted by their communities and help stop the spread of fake news online. Also, in her work as co-chair of the Council on Tech and Social Cohesion, Lena is envisioning ways to design new tech that fosters real conversations online, including the use of AI. Learn more:Digital Community Stewards free online courseDigital Peacebuilders' GuideSearching for Safer, Healthier digital spaces - review of digital peacebuilding initiatives ABOUT THE SHOW The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.orgSupport our work Connect on social:Instagram @makingpeacevisibleLinkedIn @makingpeacevisibleBluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

Gloria Laker Aciro was a teenager when war upended her family’s life in Northern Uganda. The Lord's Resistance Army, led by the infamous Joseph Kony, were known for their brutality, and for kidnapping children and making them child soldiers or child brides. As a young displaced person, Aciro became a journalist so the world would know about the suffering in Northern Uganda: The abductions, killings, the ambushes, the destruction. But after a few years, she wondered if focusing on bloodshed was the right approach. What if journalists like her could help bring peace to the country? Today, Aciro is director of the Peace Journalism Foundation of East Africa. Peace Journalism -- as you might remember from one of our previous episodes -- is when editors and reporters make choices that improve the prospects for peace. She covers peace and conflict, refugee issues, and the environment, and trains journalists around East Africa in peace journalism. Aciro was a finalist for the 2022 Women Building Peace Award given by the United States Institute of Peace. And in 2019, she received a Golden Jubilee Medal awarded by Ugandan President Yoweri, for her coverage of the LRA conflict and her contributions to current peace efforts in Northern Uganda. Aciro sat down with Making Peace Visible Education Director Steven Youngblood to reflect on her decades in the field in Uganda, and the real impact of peace journalism in the face of war and gang violence. Music in this episode by Xylo-Ziko and Joel Cummins. ABOUT THE SHOW The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.orgSupport our work Connect on social:Instagram @makingpeacevisibleLinkedIn @makingpeacevisibleBluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

Close your eyes and think of the word “war” or “gun violence.” What’s the first image that comes up? Maybe it’s news footage of the wars in Gaza or Ukraine. Or maybe it’s a scene from a movie like Hotel Rwanda or Bridge on the River Kwai, or a shoutout in any number of crime and cop dramas.  Scripted storytelling, with its ability to get up close and personal with human emotions and struggles, also has a powerful influence on our perceptions of the world. And with news outlets increasingly politically siloed, perhaps Hollywood has a better chance of shifting perspectives than journalists do.  Our guest Kate Folb  is director of the Center for Hollywood Health and Society,  a project of the Lear Center at USC Annenberg. Hollywood Health and Society (HHS) provides expert guidance for screenwriters, producers and actors about issues from HIV, to immigration, to gun violence. They have projects on the threat of nuclear war and the impact of military expenditures on our lives and wellbeing. In this interview Jamil and Kate discuss how HHS gets Hollywood writers to think differently, as well as shows and movies featuring compelling heroes without guns that you should be watching.  Series and films mentioned in this episode, in order of appearance:How to Get Away with Murder (ABC)The Cleaning Lady (Fox)Mayor of Kingstown (Paramount Plus)Arrival (Paramount Pictures)The Diplomat (Netflix)Oppenheimer (Universal Pictures)Madame Secretary (CBS, available in the US on Netflix)Getting Bombed (YouTube)  ABOUT THE SHOW The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.orgSupport our work Connect on social:Instagram @makingpeacevisibleLinkedIn @makingpeacevisibleBluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

“The United Nations was not created in order to deliver us to heaven, but in order to save us from hell.” - Dag Hammarskjöld.“To Save Us From Hell” is a new weekly news and analysis podcast about the UN. Mark Leon Goldberg, a veteran global affairs journalist and editor of the news outlets UN Dispatch and Global Dispatches, and Anjali Dayal, a political science professor and author at Fordham University, co-host the show. They join us on Making Peace Visible to explain the significance of the UN today, especially when it comes to deescalating conflicts and laying the groundwork for peace. Goldberg and Dayal’s intense focus on the UN and its work comes at a time when the world’s focus on the institution seems to be diminishing, while violent conflicts are increasing. We also have global crises like climate change, infectious disease, and refugees. The one global institution designated to deal with problems at that scale is the UN. So what’s missing from mainstream news coverage of the UN, and can it save us from hell?!Subscribe to “To Save Us from Hell” at globaldispatches.org. Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, Siddhartha Corsus, and SFmusic. ABOUT THE SHOW The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.orgSupport our work Connect on social:Instagram @makingpeacevisibleLinkedIn @makingpeacevisibleBluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

On February 14, 2018, a former student opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, with an assault rifle he’d purchased legally. Hiding in a janitor’s closet, David Hogg recorded his classmates on his phone. "I interviewed my classmates so that if we didn't make it out of there, hopefully our voices would carry on,” Hogg told NPR.” And it wouldn't be possible for the NRA and gun lobby to say, 'Oh, you can't talk about this. You're politicizing this.’”Seventeen students and staff died that day. Later that year, David Hogg co-founded March for Our Lives, and helped organize hundreds of thousands of young people to rally for an end to gun violence in the United States. In the years since, they’ve had some wins, including the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022, which enhanced background checks for 18 to 21 year-olds, and provided funding for community violence intervention and mental health services. Hogg’s new project, Leaders We Deserve, helps young progressives run for office. This week, we’re bringing you a recent interview with David Hogg from Democracy Works, a podcast about what it means to live in a democracy, from the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State University. Something that stands out about Hogg, from our perspective as a podcast about peace, is how he works across the aisle to get laws passed. Like many in the peacebuilding field, Hogg recognizes that change is often incremental, and a compromise that will save lives is more useful than political gridlock.Democracy Works co-host Jenna Spinelle spoke with David Hogg on his trip to Penn State’s campus this spring.You can find the original Democracy Works episode and a transcript here.Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions ABOUT THE SHOW The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.orgSupport our work Connect on social:Instagram @makingpeacevisibleLinkedIn @makingpeacevisibleBluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

How do you measure peace in a country? Do you look at the rates of violent crime? Assess the justice system? What about freedom of the press, the health of the economy, or general happiness?  Today's guest, Steve Killelea, is the founder and Executive Chairman of the Institute for Economics and Peace, an internationally renowned think tank. Each year, IEP publishes the Global Peace Index and the Positive Peace Index.  IEP researchers draw on reems of data to determine how the world is doing when it comes to peace. They also study the elements that make for peaceful societies: things like strong social cohesion, satisfaction with living standards, and resilience to crisis.  IEPs work promotes peace as a positive, and achievable state of well being. It also serves as a kind of warning system in times like the one we're living in, where violent conflict is on the rise in many parts of the globe. Visit visionofhumanity.org/peace-academy to take IEP's free short course on positive peace. Music in this episode by Joel Cummins, Jesse Gallagher and SFmusic. ABOUT THE SHOW The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.orgSupport our work Connect on social:Instagram @makingpeacevisibleLinkedIn @makingpeacevisibleBluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

Vanessa Bassil is the founder and president of the Media Association for Peace, and has personally trained journalists and journalism students in Lebanon and other countries in the Middle East. She is currently in graduate school at the University of Bonn in Germany, working towards a PhD in Peace Journalism. Peace Journalism, the guiding practice behind Media Association for Peace, (MAP) is when editors and reporters make choices—of what to report, and how to report it—that create opportunities for society at large to consider and value non-violent responses to conflict. Growing up in an insulated Christian community in the wake of the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990), Vanessa never had the opportunity to meet a Lebanese Muslim. As a rookie journalist, instead of working inside of one of her country’s ethnic media silos, she chose independence. She was drawn towards peacebuilding, and would report on camps that brought together groups of Sunni and Shia Muslims and Christians in the mountains. With the founding of MAP in 2013, Vanessa created a space where journalists learn to report on Lebanon’s divisive issues – including an economic crisis, the difficulties of hosting Syrian refugees, and LGBTQ rights – in ways that are nuanced and depolarizing. Watch videos produced by MAP to break stereotypes about Syrian refugees (Arabic with English subtitles)The Genius Syrian RefugeeMyassar, the Woman Who Never Gives UpThe Robot TeamWatch Vanessa Bassil’s webinar presentation to learn more about MAP (about 15 minutes)To learn more about Peace Journalism, listen to our episode with Steven Youngblood, founding director of the Center for Global Peace Journalism at Park University, and now Making Peace Visible’s Director of Education.  ABOUT THE SHOW The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.orgSupport our work Connect on social:Instagram @makingpeacevisibleLinkedIn @makingpeacevisibleBluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

William Ury is one of the world’s most influential peacebuilders and experts on negotiation. He advised Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos in the lead up to that country's historic 2016 peace agreement with the FARC, and played a key role in de-escalating nuclear tensions between the U.S. and North Korea in 2017. Getting to Yes, which Ury co-wrote with Roger Fisher back in 1981, is the world’s best selling book on negotiation. Ury co-founded the Program on Negotiation at Harvard, as well as the Abraham Path Initiative, an NGO that builds walking trails connecting communities in the Middle East. His new book is called Possible: How we Survive - and Thrive - in an Age of Conflict. It’s filled with incredible stories from Bill’s career. In this episode, Bill talks about how lessons from the failures and success of the past – in places like Northern Ireland, Colombia, and the Middle East – can be instructive when dealing with the conflicts of today.  He shares exciting ideas about how journalists can tell stories about peace. What’s more, his insights on managing conflict can be applied anywhere from the UN to the boardroom to your own family. William Ury’s ideas aren’t easy to implement –  in fact they’re incredibly challenging. Ury says conflicts don’t end, but they can be transformed, from fighting with weapons to hashing differences out in a democratic process. And if Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Colombia – places where people said violent conflict would go on forever – could transform their conflicts, then there’s hope for the seemingly “impossible” conflicts of today. Music in this episode by Joel Cummins, Podington Bear, Kevin MacLeod, Meavy Boy, and Faszo. ABOUT THE SHOW The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.orgSupport our work Connect on social:Instagram @makingpeacevisibleLinkedIn @makingpeacevisibleBluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!