Little Friends For Peace

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  • About Us
    • Mission and Values
    • Our Story
    • What We Do
    • Leadership
    • Awards and Accolades
  • Programs
    • Youth Programming >
      • School Programming
      • Peace Clubs
      • Family Opportunities
    • Adult Programming >
      • Peace Circles
      • Restorative Programming
    • Peace Camp
    • Trainings and Workshops >
      • Peace Academy
      • Private Trainings and Workshops
    • International Programming >
      • China
      • El Salvador
      • Cameroon
      • Rome
      • Uganda
    • Books and Publications
  • Get Involved
    • Volunteer
    • Group Service Projects
    • Peace Camp Staff Opportunities
    • Internships
    • Partner Organizations
  • News & Events
    • Upcoming Events & Programs
    • Charity Golf Classic
    • Newsletter
    • Blog
    • Gallery
    • LFFP In the Media
  • Contact Us
    • Get In Touch
    • Request a Program
  • Donate
  • Store

Blog

Message from LFFP Board Member - Billi Wilkerson

7/10/2020

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"I cried," said the caller. "I'm not sure why it got to me this time, but I needed to cry. Then I called you." I can't tell you how many of my friends, family members, and those I hold dear have reached out to me to unpack THIS moment - for so many reasons. This letter is to invite us to unpack it together. 
 
Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Billi Wilkerson, and I joined the Board of Directors for Little Friends for Peace toward the end of 2019. For more than ten years, LFFP has been an integral part of my family. Many of you may recognize me through my children, Nandi, Maya, and CJ. CJ was 5 when he started coming to Peace Camps - he is 17 now, and last summer CJ was a camp counselor. Maya is 19 and in college. Nandi is all grown up with a baby of her own. She has integrated peacemaking principles into the design of her one-year old's play room.
 
I am a lawyer and an advocate for peace, justice, and equality. I currently work at the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center at Howard University School of Law. Prior to law school, and for twenty-plus years, I worked with individuals, in communities, and with organizations teaching racial reconciliation, demonstrating peaceful conflict resolution, and advocating for marginalized communities here in DC and beyond. 
 
Since the death of George Floyd, and the protests that followed, I have had several people approach me with questions like: What is the best way to be an ally in the struggle for racial justice? Should I take my child to a protest? Am I wrong to judge another mother for taking her child to a protest? What should I do with the anger that is building inside me? If I feel helpless, what can I do? Will COVID-19 actually spike following recent protests?
 
Using the tools developed at LFFP, research, and insights from various sources, I would like to begin a series of conversations to address questions from parents, students of peace, and young children. The work that is to be done is color conscious, not color blind. There is a spectrum in the ebb and flow of life and each of us stands in a different place than the next. It's not helpful to suggest that the solutions to the problems presented in our communities are one dimensional. And yet, the simple truth is consistent. 
 
In this moment of anger, grief, violence, and unrest, I feel a deep sense of call to bring my gifts and experience to the greater community of LFFP. As you know, over the past few decades, LFFP is not as little as it once was. We have expanded our programs to include peacebuilding opportunities for adults (including adults who are experiencing incarceration), college students, teens, tweens, and children. 
 
Please let us know if you are interested in joining this conversation by emailing Caity Dee, c.dee@lffp.org.
 
In peace and hope,
 
Billi Wilkerson
Member, Board of Directors
Little Friends For Peace
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We stand with the black and brown community

6/5/2020

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“We must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.” - Martin Luther King, Jr. 
 
In the days since the murder of George Floyd we have been watching events across our nation with both grief and renewed commitment. And as we grieve, we redouble our commitment to our founding mission: answering violence with skills for peace.
 
Like the continuing challenge of Covid 19, this killing and its aftermath bring America’s best and worst to the fore.  At LFFP, we declare with renewed conviction that love is the answer. Peace is our product, and love is the foundation of our method.
 
For 40 years we have been providing emotionally safe spaces, in the DC metro area and around the world, where people of all ages can experience, learn, and practice the skills of peace, starting from within.
 
We choose to see this twofold crisis as an opportunity, a new opening for the work of recovery and reconciliation. With Dr. King we hold on to hope for a profound culture shift, “building dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.”
 
Since the schools and other community centers where we typically work have been closed, we have been gathering people of all ages in online Peace Circles.  Using “tool cards” and active listening, we grow together in self-awareness and we build solidarity. This summer we will hold more online circles, as well as four weeks of online Peace Camp and three sessions of the LFFP Peace Academy, culminating in a Peace Practitioner credential. We invite you to join us!
 
Do you believe, with Dr. King, that “unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word”? If you do, check us out, and find your piece of the peace.  If you don’t, we warmly welcome you to the circle. We need his vision of the beloved community most when it seems farthest away. 
 
In persistent peace, 
MJ and Jerry Park
Co-Founders, Little Friends for Peace

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Building Community through Virtual Peace Circles

4/8/2020

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LFFP has been Circling Up with people of all ages, backgrounds, and ethnicities for years. Despite the pandemic impacting the entire world we made the shift to virtual circles in order to continue on with our "check-ins." We feel now more than ever LFFP needs to help bring people together in order to connect and find tools to help navigate peacefully throughout this new journey. 

Since the world has been put to a STOP, this has put added stress on our wellness wheels- impacting our mind, body, and feelings. From the teachings of Pema Chodron, I have learned and believe when things fall apart we have choices to either fall apart or embrace the experience as an opportunity and time to reset, renew, and rewire ourselves."

During these past three weeks of adjustment to our new normal, LFFP has been doing virtual peace circles for different age groups. It has been amazing and full of connection, inspiration, and practices to help us. Not only to get through these times, but also to see this period as an opportunity to make changes in the way we live and care for ourselves and others. 

As said by one of our virtual peace circle participants: "I think that when the dust settles, we will realize how little we need, how very much we actually have, and the true value of human connection.”  

People have been coming to the circle with anxiety, fear, concern, loss of center, feeling less grounded, and loss of connections within the community. 

However, after the circles people are leaving the circle feeling more calm, grounded, hopeful, joyful, creative, energized, connected, and motivated to embrace the now. People are given time to reflect on the silver lining and enjoy what they can do and not what they can't do.  

With compassion and respect as the key ingredients in the virtual peace circles, the Zoom sessions turn into safe and welcoming spaces where everyone can share from the heart when talking about what they are thinking and feeling. To finish off our time together, LFFP leaves the attendees with a peaceful tool with ideas on how to use it in daily life. If put into practice, these tools will help bring yourself as well as others to a more peaceful state. 

As another virtual peace circle attendee states: "What I take from this beautiful peace circle is the peace circle per se, like how necessary it is to have more peace circles in the world, and how that can bring more peace culture & education to my country. I learned how necessary it is to do inner work. We need to seize this crisis as an opportunity to redefine what is really important for us and take more joy in the moments we live, in our own realities.”
​
LFFP will be Circling Up Monday through Friday at 3:00 PM EST with different groups. Check our website www.lffp.org for more details and information to sign up. Hope to see you in the circle!

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LFFP's statement on Separating Families

7/15/2018

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Little Friends for Peace (LFFP) stands in solidarity with immigrant families separated at the US border. We deplore a government system that chooses to separate family members rather than collaborating across divides to repair a damaged immigration system and address the conditions that drive immigration.  
 
LFFP interrupts violence by teaching skills for peace to children and adults regardless of immigration status, ethnicity, race, gender, or sexual orientation. Rather than dividing, we teach skills for building the Beloved Community. Rather than causing trauma by ripping families apart, we build resilience and help people heal. 

We invite everyone to experience, learn, and practice peace with LFFP programs as we continue to hold immigrants families and all families in the Light. 

--In Peace, MJ & Jerry Park and the LFFP team

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Learning to Live Gospel Nonviolence by Juliet Onufrak

4/16/2018

1 Comment

 
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​Learning to Live Gospel Nonviolence by Juliet Onufrak
 
 “Many of us feel desensitized and disconnected from one another. We experience this feeling in political polarization, depression, and an epidemic of domestic and youth violence.”
 
Center of Concern (Center) is a non-profit organization that researches, educates, and advocates from Catholic social tradition to create a world where economic, political, and cultural systems promote sustainable flourishing of the global community. The Center executes their mission by engaging with influential people and organizations that promote a similar mission of building a global and sustainable community. In April 2018, Education for Justice (EFJ), a project of the Center, asked LFFP’s Co-Directors MJ and Jerry Park to write an article for EFJ detailing their own mission, and how they advocate for peace and teach communities and individuals new practices and skills in order to promote peace at individual, community, and global levels.
 
The Center recognized that LFFP’s mission and vision are effective, scalable, and sustainable as means of creating global social justice. MJ and Jerry’s article captures the founding of their life work as well as the many successes they have had over the years. Various case studies are detailed in the article that provide evidence of the psychological and spiritual changes that MJ and Jerry’s work creates in individuals. The article also thoroughly reviews the structure of MJ and Jerry’s process of teaching peace, and provides the reader with some of MJ and Jerry’s tools of nonviolence, including: “The Wellness Wheel”, “The Peace Circle”, “The Body, Heart, Mind Practice”, “The Stop, Think, Act Practice,” “The Peace Table,” and finally the “The Restorative Circle.”
 
MJ and Jerry’s practices have been present in our society for 35 years. In 2018, violence has become normalized within our everyday lives. 78% of children from low income families in Washington, D.C., are exposed to violence before the age of 4. The desensitization and depression that has become a reality for so much of our country is because we have all been neglecting to take care of one another. As MJ and Jerry’s article highlights, the only way to fix the anxieties and pain that we all feel is to come together as a community and help one another learn the skills necessary to find individual and global peace.
 
To read MJ and Jerry’s article, please go to the Education for Justice website by clicking here: ​https://educationforjustice.org/resources/learning-live-gospel-nonviolence.
 
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Little Friends For Peace

​Mailing Address / Peace Oasis
15400 Old Marshall Hall Road
Accokeek, MD 20607
​
Peace Room/ Program Site 
128 M Street NW #235
Washington, DC 20001
Contact Us
Tel: 240-838-4549
littlefriendsforpeace@lffp.org