Dear peace educators and peacebuilders,

It has taken a bit of time to pull the information together, but it now gives me great pleasure to report to you. Our accomplishments at the conferences certainly exceeded my greatest expectations. You will be pleased to know that our deliberations have given birth to a 'Canadian Culture of Peace Program' - with the mission to advance a Culture of Peace and Non-violence, at home and abroad. You can read more about this in the Summary Statement linked below.

REPORT OF CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS:
On our web site at http://www.peace.ca/CanadianAgenda2004.htm, I am attaching the following Canadian Culture of Peace Program ("CCOPP") Reports for your information:

1. CCOPP Summary Statement (in HTML) (in Microsoft Word)
2. CCOPP Initial Action Plan (in HTML) (in Microsoft Word)
3. CCOPP Leadership & Peace Workshop Report (in HTML) (in Microsoft Word)

and our amazing, 60 page Youth Day Report (in pdf) - [we had 180 students doing an Open Space Technology conference, and they excelled]

In terms of initial priorities for consideration, quoting from Item 3. of the CCOPP Summary Statement http://www.peace.ca/CCOPPstatement2004.htm , a small core group has been given a mandate by participants to get on with the work at hand, including:

a) refinement of a short vision document (we did discuss the proposed vision statement, but the discussion needs more time than we had available), [this discussion could take place in conjunction with Item d below]

b) developing a plan of action, with timelines and key milestones, starting with a super menu of ideas provided by the co-participants (which will be enumerated in the Conference Report/Item 2. attached at http://www.peace.ca/CCOPPaction2004.htm )

c) entering into discussions with University of Alberta representatives to explore a possible relationship between the Canadian Culture of Peace Program and the University of Alberta's new program for peace education,

d) convene a Governance and Canadian Culture Of Peace Program Workshop soon (background reference http://www.peace.ca/CCOPPleadership2004.htm ),

e) identifying potential stakeholders in CCOPP and convening a conference of stakeholders in March 2005, so that the outcome will be available to feed into the Canadian Report on Culture of Peace activities (see following item f);

f) preparing a Canadian Report on Culture of Peace activities for April 2005 deadline for the United Nations General Assembly debate in September 2005, [Don Grayston to follow up]

g) develop a Marketing Strategy and seek funding for CCOPP projects, [I have already done some work in this regard, and could follow up on this item]

h) seek people and organizations to “champion” the key tasks,

i) continue to build on the Canadian Peace Education Strategy, and promote regional peace conferences, (background reference http://www.peace.ca/conference2003summary.htm )

j) support governmental peace and non-violence initiatives.

Please let me know if any corrections are required. Any further input is always appreciated. If you would like to help with the work at hand, please let me know. And please pass this information on to anyone that you think may be interested.

Regards,
Bob Stewart
http://www.peace.ca
ANNUAL PEACE EDUCATION CONFERENCE IN CANADA http://www.peace.ca/CanadianAgenda2004.htm

"The world is dangerous not because of those who do harm, but because of those who look at it without doing anything." - Albert Einstein

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