​May 2018 marked a milestone for Peacebuilding: we completed our first contract STAR Training in collaboration with the Restorative Justice Unit at the Minnesota Department of Corrections. It was an inspiring week filled with thought-provoking questions and reflections on how we can work together to create change within our systems through grassroots leadership, spearheaded by folks with the wisdom, knowledge, and determination to make meaningful change happen. Our institutions often loom over us, faceless, and it’s easy to forget that there are individuals within them who understand the importance of truth, mercy, justice, and peace. Our week at STAR with this wonderful group from the Department of Corrections was a concrete reminder that change comes from the bottom up, from the individuals who want it, and who work together to make it a reality.

Restorative Justice Coordinator, Alicia Nichols, LSW, was instrumental in bringing the 5 day STAR Training to her colleagues at the MN Dept. of Corrections in May 2018.  Alicia’s reasons for bringing STAR to the DOC is deeply rooted in her belief that when we equip the Restorative Justice Unit staff with:

• knowledge about how the body, brain and groups typically and naturally respond to traumatic events;
• skills to develop and model creative, life-giving alternative responses to maintain safety and security in correctional settings;
• tools to develop safe, invitational space to unpack and transform how they know/process the experiences of incarcerated men and women, and;
• understanding of the long-term positive impact of cultivating resilience and wellbeing (in self, family, organization or community).

 They will be more likely to facilitate nonviolent change, model healthier uses of power/leadership, and incorporate the complex experiences of incarcerated men and women to deepen their resilience and increase support for a successful transition from prison to community. DOC staff respond to wounds of conflict, violence and trauma on a daily basis in their work with incarcerated men and women, crime victims and concerned members of the public. The pre/post data analysis and program evaluations clearly demonstrated that STAR provided DOC staff with an inclusive, transformational platform to not only address individual and community trauma healing needs, but to also teach resilience strategies that set the stage for authentic individual and community engagement, healing and reconciliation.

Congratulations to all of our STAR DOC Graduates! We look forward to sharing STAR with more DOC staff and other state agencies in the future.

Written in collaboration with:
Alicia Nichols, LSW
Restorative Justice Coordinator | Victim Assistance and Restorative Justice Program

We have many people to thank for making LUNAFEST a grand success! Not only were the nine short films by, for, about women wildly entertaining, they were powerful, thought provoking, and peacebuilding. As a nonprofit organization committed to equity, these films are an important part of achieving our vision of making Minnesota the peacebuilding power state for all. The over $22,000 raised from LUNAFEST: Minneapolis supports our programs and provides scholarship assistance that makes our trainings accessible to all by offsetting the cost of tuition.
Thank you to Patty Wetterling for being our Honorary LUNAFEST Chairwoman, and for being a champion for peacebuilding. Most Minnesotans know Patty from the nightly news because of her tireless work to speak boldly about ending child abduction and exploitation. Patty and her family have been a major force toward building peace in Minnesota and across America when terrible things happen. Patty, thank you for your deep encouragement and bold peacebuilding leadership that has taught all of us how to tenaciously pursue light in the darkness, heal in the face of pain, and engage the power of peacebuilding in our communities.
Thank you also to Sunrise Banks for being our lead sponsor this year, and in particular to President Nichol Beckstrand for sharing about the bank’s compassion-driven mission to do good in the community. If you’re looking for a bank who is committed to peacebuilding, Sunrise Banks is it!
And thank you to all of our LUNAFEST attendees for making this year’s event our most successful yet. We’re honored by your support. Please save Wednesday April 24, 2019 for next year’s LUNAFEST: Minneapolis. When we come together for fun, connection, and inspiration, we feel better, we are better, and we build a stronger community – this is Peacebuilding power. ​

Gender equity has been on the forefront of the push for social change in the last year, thanks in part to the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements that sprung out of the film industry. Though the film industry has been dominated by men abusing their power since its beginnings, these forces of oppression are beginning to weaken, thanks to those who have boldly come forward to tell their truth and demand change.
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While these movements demanding equity in film are gaining momentum, we’re taking a moment to appreciate one film production company that’s been advocating for women in film since 2005. Chicken and Egg Pictures supports women making non-fiction films to create social change. Through grants and creative mentorship, Chicken and Egg pictures helps women around the world produce, direct, and act in films as a means of disrupting the status quo in an industry that’s been defined by the male gaze. With their mission of supporting women to realize their artistic goals, build sustainable careers, and achieve parity in all areas of the film industry, Chicken and Egg Pictures is a worthy cause that receives part of the proceeds from LUNAFEST.

For the fifth year in a row, the Minnesota Peacebuilding Leadership Institute is sponsoring LUNAFEST: Minneapolis.  On Wednesday April 25, 2018, 6:00 – 9:00 p.m. at the Riverview Theater, we’ll screen nine internationally curated short films by, for, about women. Since 2000, LUNAFEST has showcased the work of talented women directors from all over the world. This year’s lineup of films include a film about a 10 year-old girl training to become a professional boxer, a film tribute to the highest-paid silent film director at Universal Studios in 1916 who happens to be a woman, and a film about a Pakistani woman who graduated from MIT and now works in Silicon Valley as a game designer and provides summer camps for middle school girls to learn how to design video games.

In a historic moment where we’re reckoning with the film industry’s history of discrimination, it’s more important than ever that films – like those shown at LUNAFEST – that highlight the stories of women and people of color are made and shown widely. Thanks to #MeToo and #TimesUp, there’s a push for equity in film that echoes our need for equity in all aspects of our lives.

As a nonprofit organization committed to equity, these films are an important part of achieving our vision to Make Minnesota the Peacebuilding Power State For All. The funds raised from LUNAFEST: Minneapolis go toward Peacebuilding’s programs and scholarships that help make our trainings accessible to all by offsetting the cost of tuition. We hope you join us for LUNAFEST on Wednesday April 25 for an evening of fun, inspiring, and thought-provoking Peacebuilding in our community.

In March, we’re featuring an influential woman every day in honor of Women’s History Month.
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Today we’re celebrating:

Nellie Bly

Journalist (1867 – 1922)
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• Known for exploits as well as resourcefulness in investigative journalism
• Began a career in journalism in her early twenties after being mostly self-educated
• Gravitated toward subjects like political corruption and perceptions of problems with women working
• Traveled around the world in 72 days in homage to Jules Verne’s “Around the World in Eighty Days”
• Known for her work as an undercover journalist at Blackwell’s Island, a mental institution, where she pretended to be a patient in order to expose the inhumane conditions and practices there
• Also exposed conditions in sweatshops, jails, and other institutions through undercover reporting

In March, we’re featuring an influential woman every day in honor of Women’s History Month.
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Today we’re celebrating:

Romana Bañuelos

Businesswoman and U.S. Treasurer (1925 – 2018)

• Thirty-fourth treasurer of the United States, serving from 1971 – 1974)and first Hispanic U.S. treasurer
• Owner of a multimillion-dollar Ramona’s Mexican Food Products in Gardena, California
• Born in Miami, Arizona during the Great Depression and deported to Sonora, Mexico, where she learned to farm and cook with her family
• Returned to the U.S. at age 18 with her two sons and worked as a dishwasher and tortilla maker until she saved enough to start her own tortilla factory in downtown Los Angeles, which became the largest processor of Mexican food by 1990
• Opened the Pan-American National Bank in East Los Angeles in 1963, with the mission of bankrolling Latinx people who wanted to start their own businesses in order to help them gain political influence 

In March, we’re featuring an influential woman every day in honor of Women’s History Month.
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Today we’re celebrating:

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Associate Justice of the Supreme Court (1933 – present)
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• First woman confirmed to the Supreme Court, and one of four woman to be confirmed
• Was a wife and mother when she started law school
• Taught at Rutgers School of Law and Columbia Law as one of few women in the field
• Advocate for gender equity and women’s rights and former volunteer advocate at the ACLU
• Now a pop culture icon known as the Notorious RBG in recognition of her leadership

In March, we’re featuring an influential woman every day in honor of Women’s History Month.
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Today we’re celebrating:

Martina Navratilova

Tennis player and activist (1956 – present)

• Selected as the greatest female tennis player by “Tennis” magazine in 2005 for the years 1965 through 2005
• Ranked number one female tennis player in the world seven years in a row
• Won more titles than any other female tennis player in history
• Trailblazer for navigating fame as an openly gay athlete in the 1980s and ‘90s
• Social activist for animal rights, gay rights, and underserved children

In March, we’re featuring an influential woman every day in honor of Women’s History Month.
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Today we’re celebrating:

Calamity Jane (Martha Jane Cannary)

Frontierswoman and sharpshooter (1825? – 1903)
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• Excellent markswoman, rider, and gender non-conformist who chose not to wear women’s clothing
• Lost her parents around age 12 and drifted around mining districts in Montana
• Settled in Deadwood, South Dakota
• Cared for the sick during the smallpox epidemic
• Her nickname “Calamity Jane” may have referred to her compassion for the less fortunate or for the warning she gave men who crossed her

In March, we’re featuring an influential woman every day in honor of Women’s History Month.
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Today we’re celebrating:

Margaret Sanger

Birth control activist, nurse, sex educator, and writer (1883 – 1966)
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• Worked as a nurse in the early twentieth century on the lower East Side of Manhattan, where she treated women in a seemingly constant state of pregnancy, but left nursing to find practical methods of birth control after receiving many requests from her patients to control conception
• Worked for years to make birth control a fundamental human right (and coined the term “birth control”), despite immediate persecution from the government and organized religion
• Opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, where she was arrested after an undercover police officer bought a copy of her family planning pamphlet
• Founded the American Birth Control League, which later became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. In New York City, she organized the first birth control clinic staffed by all-female doctors, as well as a clinic in Harlem with an all African-American advisory council and later an African-American staff