The Peace Ambassador Training

We are clearly in a time of the most accelerated changes in history. The skills of defusing and transforming conflict and healing social wounds are at the core of whether we can create a healthy, vibrant, peaceful and sustainable world.

You CAN make a profound difference and truly be part of the change our planet needs – and you can learn to do so effectively with tools and strategies from 16 of the world’s most respected peacebuilders and renowned social healer James O’Dea.

We’ll show you how with this 20-week comprehensive training curriculum, which will address Five Pillars of Peacebuilding:

1. Deep Personal Peace: Cultivating the psychological, emotional and spiritual dimensions of peace as the great foundation for deep engagement in the world.
2. Healing Personal & Collective Wounds: transforming personal wounds and collective trauma to create personal and social transformation and significant evolutionary change.
3. Communicating Peace: The art of skilled communication for yourself, family, community and world. You’ll learn the latest in peacemaking, conflict resolution, social discourse and dialogue.
4. Mastering Systems Change: understanding how to create systemic change via models and strategies for unprecedented whole system shifts.
5. Organizing for a New World: community-building and collaboration skills that expand your leadership capacity and help you offer your deepest gifts.

Through this five-month journey, we will:

• Give you profound skills and tools for cultivating peace in your life, your family, and your community, providing the training for you to be a more effective peacemaker in the world.
• Help you navigate conflict in powerfully effective ways, giving you the essential skillset of a social healer.
• Empower you to release old wounds, navigate stress and clear barriers to intimate friendship, as well as understand how to accelerate that process in others.
• Help you understand exactly how to practice and teach principles of peaceful communication that alleviate aggression and antagonism and facilitate others in creating a culture of peace during this momentous period of planetary change.
• Teach you the state-of-the-art in peacemaking, as well as leading-edge science and a deep experience of the latest theory and praxis of peacework (including a fully integrated vision of the inner and outer dimensions of peace).
• Give you a comprehensive map for “spiral wizardry” and working with different value systems.
• Provide a strong foundation in community-building and organizing skills.
• Develop your skills to stand in the fire of hostility and aggression and transform them.
• Inspire and guide you to manifest your greatest qualities in service to humanity’s emergence and your deepest identity as a Peace Ambassador.
• Connect you with an inspiring network of peacebuilders, friends and allies from around the world, including direct exposure to the planet’s leading peacemakers.
• Give you an opportunity to play a significant role in a massive Summer of Peace 2012 series of world-changing events.

The Peace Ambassador training is The Shift Network’s certification process for leaders in the Summer of Peace 2012, a global network of events and activities promoting the shift to a culture of peace. During the program, you will develop and hone a vision for how you can play a peacebuilder leadership role in this significant global event. We’ll also offer many ways for you to apply your skills through our broader network, which may include paid opportunities as well.

Get immediately download The Peace Ambassador Training

This training is for you if:

• You long to be a true peacebuilder during this pivotal time – but know you could be more effective if you had the right skills and practices.
• You hunger for a comprehensive map that draws upon spiritual, scientific and socio-political knowledge – the best knowledge in the world.
• You want to help heal personal and collective wounds – and are open to learning exactly how to do it.
• You strive to communicate in a healthy way that brings people, families and organizations together to work and collaborate more effectively.
• You want to develop techniques for cultivating inner peace and spaciousness, lowering the walls in your own heart, so you can come to forgiveness and healing around past wounds and teach others to do the same.
• You see that there is something quite beautiful underway in the world – and you want to learn from the most hopeful programs and people about how to play your highest role.
• You understand that a committed process of practice and learning over five months is the best way for you evolve your skills and yourself to the next level.

We at The Shift Network believe that each and every one of us must learn to become a skillful peacebuilder at this critical time on planet earth. It’s a foundational set of skills to not only help our world shift but also to improve our personal lives, families and communities.

The peacebuilder works at the inner core of his/her own being, engages in healing wounds in family, community and in the larger social body, learns new maps and models from theory and practice so that she/he can find their own unique contribution to global transformation.

The transformation that comes from peacebuilding also liberates our hearts, minds and souls from negative patterns, resistance and fear, allowing us to become more radiant lights in the world. Our journey is thus also a journey into our deepest selves, helping us to heal old wounds, remove barriers to intimacy and trust and make powerful friendships in the world.

This state-of-the-art virtual certification program offers you the best peacebuilders in the world, and it is led and facilitated by one of the most respected social healers and synthesizers – James O’Dea. James combines a career in which he was Director of Amnesty International , Washington DC, and President of The Institute of Noetic Sciences. He has been engaged in groundbreaking international social healing dialogues for over a decade and is currently engaged with practitioners and projects in Rwanda, Israel/Palestine and Northern Ireland.

In short, James is the perfect person to guide you into the next level of mastery in your peacebuilding skillset, helping you ignite your deepest gifts. Our first course with him received rave reviews and a clear call to take this work further and deeper.

We see the Peace Ambassador training as the most important preparation for people who would like to participate as leaders in the Summer of Peace 2012, a global network of events and activities designed to create social healing and a profound spreading of peace. Entering into this training is also entering into a deeper relationship with The Shift Network and our mission to create a collective Shift.

So do join us for a transformational journey!

In spirit,
Stephen Dinan
Founder, The Shift Network

The Training will offer you an immersive experience in building skills with today’s top peace leaders. For each Pillar of Peacebuilding in the Training, you’ll learn from James O’Dea and 2-3 core faculty on the methodologies and peace practices they use in their work.

James will be weaving and integrating these teachings into a cohesive map for peacebuilding from the personal to the planetary throughout the Training. You’ll also have weekly practices, readings, and assignments that deepen your experience of the material and put you into close collaboration with other training members from around the world.

James is currently Co- Director of The Social Healing Project funded by the Kalliopeia Foundation. This work has led him to Rwanda, Israel/Palestine, N.Ireland and elsewhere. He is a member of the extended faculty of The Institute of Noetic Sciences and its immediate past President.

He was Executive Director of The Seva Foundation, an international health and development organization and, for ten years, was the Washington Office Director of Amnesty International. The Social Healing Project, assessing the convergence of societal healing initiatives around the world, is also collaborating with Intersections International in New York to convene frontier multidisciplinary dialogues on this theme. He is a member of the Evolutionary Leaders group founded by Deepak Chopra and Diane Williams and lectures widely on emerging worldviews, and integral approaches to social transformation.

He is committed to dialogue as a practice and is engaged in dialogues at SEED Graduate Institute between native elders, physicists, and thought leaders; between Israeli and Palestinian psychologists and social workers, and contributes to dialogue on systems thinking and government policy making with the DC based Global Systems Initiatives. He has been a part of dialogue initiated with the Obama Administration on systems work and policy making. He and Dr Judith Thompson co-led a series of international dialogues called Compassion and Social Healing. His book Creative Stress: A Path For Evolving Souls Living Through Personal and Planetary Upheaval ( April 2010) is highly praised and featured in Kosmos Journal, Spirituality and Health magazine, The Well Being Journal and dozens of other media outlets.

James is also an adviser to the World Peace Festival, the largest peace event ever to be held, and on the Advisory Board of The Peace Alliance.

“I tremendously value my personal path as a peacemaker and this course was informational, concrete, spiritually inspirational and motivating for me to continue and intensify my effort to be a peacemaker in my community and how I approach everything I do.” -Anne M Picard

“A truly quality experience from start to finish, this telecourse presented a deep synthesis of peacemaking material combinedwith practices that, when applied, had immediate and profoundly life affirming impact on my relationships. These practices work! The Shift Network’s ability to fully support the student learning experience through group interaction, audio tapings, class transcripts and the Ning website convinces me of the stellar quality of virtual classes!” -Carol Anne

“If God could speak to us He/She would speak, perhaps even beg, a message of living in peace. God sent humanity a message for peace. James O’Dea delivered that message.”
-Rita Kathlyn

“I feel really empowered and happy by all the inspirations I got out of The Path of the Peacemaker Course. The 4 sacred skills are since then part of my daily life. A really nourishing course, uplifting my body, mind and spirit.” -Katharina Sander

“It is unusual for a course to be always dynamic and deep. Most courses are a little helpful and a little informative. This course was deep and gentle and demanding. I recommend it highly.” – Mary van den berg Green

“James O’Dea is a gifted synthesizer of theories and belief structures, states and stages, levels and perspectives. James has the capacity to think and speak from his heart on complex and potentially divisive subjects, rendering choices simple.” – Lisa Norton

• Twenty 90-minute class sessions with James O’Dea and core faculty, including live, interactive calls and exercises plus question and answer time. Classes on Wednesday nights.
• Twenty 30-minute small group practice sessions (Wednesdays after class with James)
• Special Bonus Workshop #1 with Kimmie Weeks
• Special Bonus workshop #2 with Ervin Laszlo & Barbara Marx Hubbard
• Unlimited access to recordings of all class sessions (listen online or download the mp3 file to your iPod or audio player)
• PDF transcripts for each class session
• Clear and concise homework exercises and practices to deepen your experience and application of the material
• Participation in a private online community with other course members from around the world.
• Constructive feedback on your personal project for peacebuilding during the Summer of Peace 2012

Title: Peace Ambassador Training: a 20-week Certification Program

Price: only $197/month for five months or single-pay discount of $897 (save $88)

Note that your registration also supports a scholarship fund for peacebuilders from developing countries who will become part of your global community.