This week’s Featured Peacebuilding Group is AmeriCorps, a network of national service programs, made up of three primary programs that each take a different approach to improving lives and fostering civic engagement. Members commit their time to address critical community needs like increasing academic achievement, mentoring youth, fighting poverty, sustaining national parks, preparing for disasters, and more.
For young people just out of high school or college, AmeriCorps is an ideal form of alternative service, kind of like a domestic Peace Corps. One of my son’s friends who graduated with him from the University of Maryland is current teaching chemistry in a high school in Arkansas (Samantha Schweickhardt) before she heads to medical school.
I am conflict resolution educator, peacebuilding trainer and career coach. My professional experience has spanned the legal, think tank, international, quasi-government, and higher and secondary education sectors. I have taught at all higher education levels: community college, 4-year undergraduate (private, public, religious), graduate, and international. In 2003-2004 I was a U.S. Fulbright Scholar teaching at the University of Tartu in Estonia. From 2005 -2012 I was a senior program officer and senior manager at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington where I managed programs for colleges and universities and developed training for faculty and students. I work with all groups and educational institutions to support peacebuilding awareness.
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