Ms. Hoffman has been active in peacebuilding for over 20 years in a variety of capacities - professor, trainer, facilitator, program director, consultant, and funder. A former Political Science professor at Principia College, Ms. Hoffman left academia to focus on the practice of conflict resolution and peacebuilding. She has developed and led conflict resolution training programs in corporate, congregational, educational and community settings.

She was a founder and Executive Director of Peace Discovery Initiatives, which pioneered in positive approaches to peacebuilding, as well as in mobilizing religious resources for peace. She has designed, convened and facilitated backchannel Middle East peacemaking initiatives and worked to bring grassroots Israeli and Palestinian peacemakers together with American policymakers. She advocated for religion to be used as a constructive element of this peacemaking process and pioneered in techniques for doing this, culminating in the establishment of the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University. Fambul Tok International is dedicated to advancing peace by mobilizing ordinary people-entire communities ravaged by war-in the hard work of reconciliation. Fambul Tok originated in the realization that peace can't be imposed from the outside, or the top down. Nor does it need to be. The community led and owned peacebuilding we support, witness and celebrate in Sierra Leone are teaching us that communities have within them the resources they need for their own healing. We believe this process has much to offer other post-conflict countries-and the world. www.fambultok.org

Catalyst for Peace is a Portland, Maine based foundation that identifies and supports community based peacebuilding work around the world. Our current work focuses on post-conflict Africa, and also on the ways moderate religious voices are mobilizing for peace.
We are committed to finding the stories that aren't being told, learning from the lessons of local cultures and supporting their role in peacemaking, and disseminating these lessons to a global audience. www.catalystforpeace.org

The River of Peace and Justice: regaining interconnectivity to sustain and flourish amidst conflict and change with heart phoenix, dot maver, and jeffrey weisberg of the river phoenix center for peacebuilding

Heart Phoenix, Jeffrey Weisberg, Dot Maver
(L to R) of the
River Phoenix Center for Peacebuilding

Thursday, May 3rd
Focus: We will explore the foundational, grassroots aspects of regaining our human connectivity and underscore the consciousness plus practices that support a more humane justice: one that seeks to understand, amend, atone, and heal individual and collective wounds. It is my pleasure and honor to host Dot, Jeffrey and Heart and to honor the powerfully service-oriented and conscious life of River Phoenix, who devoted his life to raising awareness of these very principles of a unified humanity and planet.

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