The Peaceful Village is a program facilitated by the Manitoba School Improvement Program (MSIP). The Peaceful Village is an ideal, a location, and an educational process where school and community members work in solidarity to enrich the lives of all members of the 'village'. The creation of the program comes from our belief that the school shares much of the responsibility for the continuous renewal of the community in which it is situated. The villagers invest their hopes for a better world in the school because the primary aim of public education is to help young people to actualize the villagers` collective understanding of what it means to live together peacefully in a democratic society. The Peaceful Village honours the unique characteristics of each community. Program facilitators strive to include as many voices as possible throughout the implementation process. The collaboration begins with an intense participatory action research project to identify a community’s greatest strengths and needs. Program facilitators work with educators and partner with community members to discuss and then act on the most important issues facing young people and their families. The Peaceful Village is currently run in 5 different site; Community site (for students who don't have the village at their schools), Hugh John Macdonald, Gordon Bell High School, Glenlawn Collegiate and our most recent site at Fort Richmond Collegiate/Acadia. The Peaceful Village will look different in each school community but the heart of the program will remain the same. We will start with the question, “Do all members of our community have the enjoyment of economic and social justice, equality and the entire range of human rights and fundamental freedoms within society?” (United Nations, 1996). The initial answers to this question would begin to situate the action research and inform the ways in which the school could better help the community address important issues related to equity and justice. The program's Key strategies are as follows;
Teach literacy strategies in first languages
Extend the school day
Assess participants' literacy skills twice per year
Build academic vocabularies through tutoring
Develop friendship networks
Embed music, arts and sports programming
Create opportunities for youth to set goals and to build leadership skills
"Act out" with social justice theatre
Build literacy across families
Nurture relationships at monthly feasts (Village Kitchen)
Focus on staff diversity and capacity building
Practice radical love for social justice
Info retrieved from:
http://www.hughjohn.ca/programs-and-activities/peaceful-village
http://www.msip.ca/contact/
