Rebecca Sargent has been a student of peace and conflict for most of the past decade across several disciplines and programs with a goal of life-long education. Read all of her posts here.

Nick Martin is the Executive Director of the US Association for the University for Peace (UPEACE/US) where he has helped to create two innovative conflict transformation programs for elementary and middle school students: DCPEACE and PeaceRooms. Read all of Nick's blog posts.

Rebecca Sargent has been a student of peace and conflict for most of the past decade across several disciplines and programs with a goal of life-long education. She is a contributor to Ashoka Peace.

The Haitian crisis made many people feel helpless. You donated money, but you don’t have medical knowledge, or building skills, or anything else you feel may be useful in the rebuilding effort. Maybe you have tons of computer knowledge or you are a good researcher, but how can that help in a crisis zone?

Well, you may have more useful skills for a crisis than you think. Crisis camps are self-organized groups of web developers and techie volunteers who use internet technologies to make a difference in crisis situations. Instead of creating applications for the blackberry, facebook or twitter, these people are using their talents to create applications and research that help NGOs to disperse food, map crisis regions, translate information, design visualizations used to track donations or volunteer work, and data source information on NGOs so that they can help them be more efficient or to hold them more accountable.

Priya Parker has worked in India, Africa and the US on peace-building and social-innovation. Photos courtesy of Leila Chirayath Jana.

Even if you have already donated money to assist the people of Haiti, you might also consider donating a few hours of your work.  And you don’t even have to leave your bedroom.

Mission 4636 is an emergency-reporting service that surfaced in the wake of the January 12 earthquake.  Anyone in Haiti with a cellphone can SMS the number 4636 with a message that would immediately be sent to a database of volunteers managed by the organization Ushahidi. (See Sarah Jefferson’s post on Ushahidi here). Ushahidi translates the message from Creole or French into English, categorizes it, geo-tags it, and plots it on a map. It is then streamed back to responders on the ground in Haiti.  [You can volunteer here]. 

To date, Mission 4636 has received 30,000 messages and, according to its blog, “has directed emergency response teams to hundreds of medical emergencies and directed the first food and water to tens of thousands.”

Many of the peace strategies used in current conflict zones focus on reducing the direct violence or the structural violence within the government systems while neglecting to truly address the cultural violence that lingers within the society. Cultural violence, a term made famous by peace scholar Johan Galtung, is described as “any aspect of a culture that can be used to legitimize violence in its direct or structural form” (Journal of Peace Research), which can include comments, conversations, writing, art, or ideologies.

I received an email recently telling me about a non-traditional walking tour that allows citizens in Telaviv to ‘meta-tour’ Palestinian Gaza, and New Yorkers to explore Baghdad in their own city.   The concept confused me a bit so I decided to check it out. 

Youarenothere.org (YANH) calls itself a ‘dislocative tourism agency’.  A Jewish and Palestinian-founded group, Palestinian Laila El-Haddad and Israeli New York-based Mushon Zer-Aviv have created a city tour to explore conflict zones from a distance.

How does the tour work?

Join Ashoka Peace for a Social Entrepreneur Twitter chat (#SocEntChat) this Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 from 4-6pm EST. The topic is Social Innovation in Peace Building. Share your work, thoughts and insights to help us answer the following questions:

1.Why is innovation important in the fields of peace building and conflict resolution?

2.What are the most innovation ideas and solutions you’ve seen to build peace, tolerance and empathy around the world?

3.What patterns or best practices are we beginning to witness in the work of social entrepreneurs in the peace building field?

4.What is (or what should be) the role of business in peace building and conflict resolution?

Leave a comment if you have any more questions or topics you’d like to include, and find instructions on how to join the chat here. We hope to connect with you!

Everyday in the news Afghanistan is tagged with words such as "war", "terror", "killings", "explosion", "bomb" and many other destrutive terms. Rarely, if ever, do we see positive news about Afghanistan, particular that coming directly from civil society. This is why the 3D Security Initiative's "Video Tour of Peacebuilding in Afghanistan" is so critical to the peace building field - it's the most positive news coming out of Afghanistan that I've seen in quite some time. 3D recently published a set of 11 videos that highlight peace building initiatives throughout Afghanistan, including educational peace and conflict programs, individual-led peace projects, civil society organizations, and a new Afghan website dedicated to peace building, all initiated and led by Afghans in Afghanistan. You will be both inspired and comforted to hear from these changemakers.

For more on-the-ground peace solutions led by Afghanis check out these Ashoka Fellows working in Afghanistan.

A few weeks ago, I wrote on the potential for smartphones to aid in UN Peacekeeping missions. Read my entries here and here.

The response to these posts has been very thought-provoking. People close to the UN were particularly interested in exploring the idea more, and I have been working with them to more fully explore the possibilities. I hope to write more on the outcomes of those conversations in the near future.

There have also been challenges to the idea, especially from Tomi Ahonen. His views are presented here. What follows below is my response to Mr. Ahonen.

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Tomi,