PEACE DIRECT WANTS TO CHANGE THE WORLD

Peace Direct wants to change the balance of power and resources between local people and outsiders so that local peace building is central to all strategies for managing conflict.

We believe local individuals and organisations have knowledge and social capital that outsiders can’t access, and which are essential to achieving lasting peace. We believe if local initiatives were adequately funded, prospects for peace would increase and peace building could be done more cost effectively.

So Peace Direct needs to work with others to:

· Fund local peace building

·  Demonstrate the effectiveness of local peace building

·  Make it easy for people to find out what local peace building initiatives exist

·  Increase our knowledge about how ‘outsiders’ can work effectively with ‘local
initiatives’

·  Get the public on board

·  Build coalitions of local peace builders in conflict areas which can have greater strategic impact.

Peace Direct grew out of work at the Oxford Research Group (ORG) on the effectiveness of civil society peace building, published as War Prevention Works. It was clear to Scilla Elworthy, then Director of ORG, that local peace building could be highly cost-effective, yet it was starved of funding. From 2001, she started developing the idea of ‘Give Peace a Bank’ – aiming to raise an endowment fund, the interest on which would be used to fund local peace building initiatives. Through a number of public events she started raising awareness about the importance of local peace building.

In 2003, she joined forces with Carolyn Hayman, who had realised that it was much easier to make grants to UK based peace organizations than those working on the frontline of conflict. She had concluded that what was needed was a trusted conduit that people could use to channel funds to local peace building in conflict areas.

Over the next 18 months, as Peace Direct started to take shape, Scilla and Carolyn looked for sources of funding, adding to the funds they were already planning to commit which in Scilla’s case was the Niwano Peace Prize which she won in 2003. A turning point was reached when Lord (Joel) Joffe convened a meeting of around 35 people with a potential interest in Peace Direct in September 2003. Three questions were posed:

• What do front line peace builders need?

• Will the public give to peace?

• How will Peace Direct relate to existing peace organisations?

The positive mood of this meeting led to the first Peace Direct Board, chaired by Dame Anita Roddick. With a Board in place, charitable status gained in February 2004, Peace Direct recruited Carolyn as Chief Executive to complement the existing team of three staff and made its first grants to projects in Iraq and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In 2005, Peace Direct was named Best New Charity at the prestigious UK Charity Awards.
 

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