World Cafe for Peace

I’ve often wondered about the best way to approach the topic of peace so that people actually feel empowered, capable of having impact and confident of their ability to take action in this area.   Everyone wants peace yet most people feel helpless about having any influence at all on bringing about a peaceful world.  As a coach I know that telling people doesn’t work half as much as letting people discover it on their own.  The coaching approach creates the conditions for spectacular ah-ha moments of newly discovered ideas and awareness in one-on-one conversations, but how to obtain this on a larger scale ?

I found the answer in The World Café process, where the asking of meaningful questions to a group elicits discovery, co-creation, innovation, self-awareness and an ensuing thirst for action.  What better tool to talk together about creating peace in our surrounding environment: home, workplace, community, and perhaps even at a larger scale?

With this idea in mind, Coach for Peace launched its first world cafe specifically dedicated to the theme of peace last year on the occasion of International Day of Peace 2009.  Close to 40 representatives of civil society, coaches and professionals in different fields met to exchange ideas on how to create and maintain peace in everyday life. 

The World Café rolled-out  over 4 conversations ignited by the following questions:

1    How do you create peace around you today ?
2    In what other ways do envisage to create peace ?
3    What questions for peace will you ask ?
4    What are the first steps you will undertake ?

The output of this world café was a Charter “Questions pour la Paix” containing 42 questions on the theme of peace that the participants committed to asking in their close environment throughout the year.

For most participants it was a first experience in co-creation and they were amazed at how many aspects of peace were unveiled in such a short time and also moved by the intense humanity of the experience.

Results were harvested with post-its (one color per question) which we then clustered by topic.

Visual summaries were captured by visual recorder and graffiti artist Manuel Chopard.

Photos at   http://www.theworldcafecommunity.org/photo/albums/world-cafe-questi...

The second world cafe on peace will be held on 1 October 2010 in celebration of International Day of Peace 2010 , in cooperation with International Coach Federation , Grenoble, France.  Participants will be professional coaches and the theme is “Inner peace, a key factor in our performance as coaches”.   I’ll post more information after the event.

If you are running world cafes on the theme of peace, please add your stories to this thread !