Collective and community initiatives can empower those suffering from the wounds of a violent past to collaborate towards mutual healing, thus creating new possibilities for peace.
To better understand the significance of these community-rooted collective healing endeavours, the GHFP and the UNESCO Slave Route Project hosted a one-day International Symposium, at the Royal Society for the Arts in London.
The event brought together practitioners and scholars who have experiences and expertise in the field of communal and collective healing of mass traumas, for an intimate dialogue focused around three core questions:
What are the typical psychological and social symptoms encountered in communities resulting from the experience and legacies of past atrocities?
What might constitute collective healing in these situations?
How do community-based processes and practices contribute to collective healing? (And how would the community evaluate collective healing? What are the relevant indicators that some healing has taken place?)
What would it mean to be a creator of peace in your own life, family, community, country and world?
This year, the GHFP will be hosting two Women’s Peace Circles at our Brighton premises, in collaboration with Creators of Peace (CofP). We invite friends and colleagues (and those who are new to our work!) to join usduring the weekends of 20th-22nd March or 2nd-4th October 2020.
For nearly 30 years, Creators of Peace has been bringing together women across the globe, from all backgrounds, ages and cultures who seek empowerment, inspiration and hope in our current global contexts.
Come and participate, learn, discuss, grow, share stories and explore how you can be a creator of peace.
Colleagues from CofP facilitate a ‘talking circle’, where all voices are respectfully heard, establishing shared values which will allow the group to explore diverse perspectives on topics such as:
What is peace?
Circles of concern and hope
What builds and destroys peace?
Qualities and strategies of a peacemaker
Inner Peace
Inner Listening
Listening to others
The power of forgiveness
Putting peace into action
Programme:
Friday: 6.30pm – 9.30pm: Peace Circle Session I (includes supper)
Saturday: 9.30am – 6.30pm: Peace Circle Session II (includes lunch)
Sunday: 9.30am – 3.30pm: Peace Circle Session III (includes lunch)
This programme is offered free of charge, sponsored by the GHFP and Creators of Peace volunteers.
Spaces are limited, please email events@ghfp.org to request a booking form, indicating which peace circle (March or October) you are interested to attend.
The GHFP has been partner for The Ethics Education Fellowship programme (EEF).
EEF seeks to strengthen the sustainable delivery of ethics education programs for children in formal education settings to advance global citizenship and build more peaceful and inclusive societies. Teachers who took part in our program report stronger competencies and an improved ability to build inclusive, respectful, and engaging classrooms, leading to better learning outcomes and students’ engagement.
On Tuesday, 11 November 2025, we invite policymakers, teacher educators, and partners to join us in an international webinar: We Are Transforming Education: National Examples to Promote and Integrate Ethics Education – Successes, Challenges and Opportunities.
📅 Tuesday, 11 November 2025 🕚 11:00 – 13:00 UTC 📍 Via Zoom 👉 Register here: https://lnkd.in/ePGAHykb
Despite global commitments to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), persistent barriers have continued to hinder meaningful progress. Amongst these barriers, are transgenerational trauma, gender-based inequality, limited opportunities for youth engagement, and fragmented community responses. The UNESCO Collective Healing Initiative, through its pioneering Intergenerational Dialogue and Inquiry (IDI) approach, uniquely tackles these barriers by harnessing cultural wisdom, fostering communal resilience, and strengthening youth leadership.
To discern the impact of the IDI approach, the Guerrand-Hermès Foundation and Global Humanity for Peace (GHfP) Institute at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David have undertaken a three-year research study in 9 countries, investigating the processes and outcomes of intergenerational approaches in achieving the SDGs. This study engaged youth and elders, who are participants in the UNESCO Collective Healing programmes. In addition, the Institute also sought the perspectives of global youth on their needs for leadership development and changemaking.
Emergent insights from both studies were presented in New York during the 2025 UN ECOSOC Youth Forum as a Side Event. The questions explored include:
What concrete evidence demonstrates that intergenerational approaches significantly contribute to SDGs?
How can international, national, and community-level policymakers effectively integrate intergenerational approaches in sustainable development strategies?
What specific policy commitments can stakeholders (governments, NGOs, researchers, politicians, youth leaders) make today to ensure that intergenerational approaches become integral to achieving the 2030 Agenda?
Led by Prof Scherto Gill and our young co-researcher, Casey Overton, this interactive event brought together voices from UNESCO, academia, policy, and youth to examine evidence from the research projects, and highlighted opportunities for policy integration, such as scalable intergenerational strategies to bolster community resilience and social inclusion towards well-being futures.
Amongst the findings presented are that today’s youth navigate a world shaped by global disturbance, climate crises, and rapid technological change, often experiencing fragmentation and alienation. Intergenerational processes and approaches can enable elders to better understand youth perspectives while supporting youth to reconnect with traditional wisdom, cultural resources, and collective resilience — key to overcoming obstacles to sustainable development.
These studies underscore the transformative potential of intergenerational strategies in fostering long-term positive change, bridge historical divisions, and promote youth-led collective action for the SDGs. It is precisely such insights that can inform policy development, by stressing the critical need for practical implementation of IDI and for ensuring intergenerational accountability.
Casey further reflected on the potential and limitation of intergenerational approach. In particular, she pointed out that whilst dialogue can serve as connective tissue, aimed at building bridges, enabling understanding and collaboration, power disparity can inhibit dialogue. For instance, IDI in some contexts doesn’t always take place amongst equals. Therefore it requires institutional structures and processes to systematically integrate intergenerational approach to social transformation.
The session received enthusiastic responses from the participants who both recognised the significance of these research studies and echoed the importance of IDI in their own national and local contexts, in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas.
The GHFP is delighted to be joining UNESCO 2024 Global Forum Against Racism and Discrimination to be held in Barcelona on 10th-11th December. The Forum will bring together technical and policy experts to advance the international movement for structural justice and social equality.
In particular, the GHFP has been planning and designing, with the Global Humanity for Peace Institute, and our community partners, an experiential workshop on intergenerational dialogue & inquiry (IDI). IDI aims to examine and address the legacies of dehumanisation, including slavery, colonialism, racism and discrimination. IDI has been a main process of the Collective Healing Circles (CHCs) currently being piloted in communities in 14 countries around the Atlantic shores.
The IDI workshop will form a part of the UNESCO’s flagship Master Class Against Racism and Discrimination programme on 10th Dec. during the UNESCO Global Forum.
The Handbook is intended to support the efforts of facilitators and other professionals who are interested in hosting Collective Healing Circles (CHCs) in their local community. The intellectual insights underpinning the CHC Programme proposed in this Handbook are drawn from contemporary research on historical atrocities, such as the transatlantic trade of enslaved Africans, colonialisation, and mass killing and violent displacement of Indigenous peoples, as well as the legacies of dehumanisation, such as racism and structural injustice.
The practical ideas for implementing the CHC Programme featured throughout the Handbook are inspired by existing proven approaches of similar programmes, and those which have emerged from a one-year pilot of the Programme in five countries (Kenya, Nigeria, the UK, the USA and Colombia) on four continents.
The Handbook was presented by Mrs Gabriela Ramos, UNESCO Assistant Director General, during the 30th Anniversary of UNESCO Routes of Enslaved Peoples Programme on 10th October 2024.
The presentation was followed by reports from community partners and participants of the UNESCO Collective Healing Initiative on the process and impact of our CHC activities on four continents.
Amongst those in the audience at UNESCO HQ were global leaders, national delegations, and civil society representatives.
Join us at Geneva Peace Week 2024 A Must-Attend Workshop for Educators and Change-Makers!
In an increasingly globalised world, where schools and communities are facing rising tensions, discrimination and xenophobia, it is essential that education empowers children with peace-building awareness and skills and nurtures ethical values.
Join us during Geneva Peace Week 2024 for a dynamic, interactive workshop “Addressing discrimination and xenophobia in schools through ethics education,” designed for all those passionate about transforming education into a positive force for peace. The workshop particularly engages teachers, policy makers, as well as education practitioners, and students.
Whether you attend in person in Geneva or online from anywhere in the world, this session is an unmissable opportunity to explore how transformative pedagogy can help foster peaceful and inclusive societies through ethics education and dialogic classrooms.
Why Attend?
Explore ethics education: Discover how ethics education and transformative pedagogy help create safe learning environments, build trust, and facilitate mutual understanding across diverse backgrounds.
Gain practical skills: Learn how to transform your school into a peace champion through interactive whole-school approaches, inclusive inclusive learning environments, dialogic classrooms, children-led curriculum, teachers’ professional development and community engagement.
Hands-on learning: Experience peer-to-peer learning with colleagues from all around the world, and engage on a narrative analysis about structural and cultural violence in schools.
Event Details:🗓️ 15 October 2024⌛ 15:00 – 16:30 CET📍 Participate on-site in Geneva or online🌐 Interpretation services available through Wordly AI
Speakers
Prof Scherto Gill, Director, Global Humanity for Peace Institute, University of Wales Trinity St David / Senior Fellow, Guerrand-Hermès Foundation for Peace
Mary Kangethe, Director, Education Programs, Kenya National Commission for UNESCO
Itje Chodidjah, Chairperson, Indonesia National Commission for UNESCO
Maria Lucia Uribe, Executive Director, Arigatou International Geneva
The Ethics Education Fellowship concluded its first phase marked by an international event – the Convening of Champions meeting held in April 2024 in Abu Dhabi. The event gathered senior representatives from Ministries of Education, UNESCO offices, partner organizations, religious leaders and international experts. During the event, international participants and Ethics Education fellows reflected on the ways that the Programme has been meaningful to bringing transformative changes to teachers, learners, and formal education institutions. These efforts have significantly contributed to strengthening global citizenship and building more inclusive, peaceful societies.
This vibrant event served as a hub for discussing the critical importance of prioritizing and investing in Ethics Education. Children’s heartfelt testimonials illuminated the room, while participating countries made promising commitments to continue their support. It was a celebration of a pivotal milestone, closing the first phase and paving the way for the second.
The following report captures the deliberations at the Convening of Champions event. Read the Report.
The second phase of the Ethics Education Fellowship program has already began! In this phase, we aim to reach more children across all six countries and integrate Ethics Education into national plans and teacher training programs.
What is the Ethics Education Fellowship? Implemented in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Kenya, Mauritius, Nepal, and Seychelles, this groundbreaking initiative demonstrated the transformative power of Ethics Education and its contribution to learning to live together.
G20 Interfaith Forum (IF20) has convened diverse interfaith actors inspired by the G20 agendas since 2014. Through dialogue, and analytic work, IF20 aims to enrich the G20 process by bringing the wisdom, experience, and voice of diverse faith communities alongside other global constituencies. IF20 Education Working Group (Edu WG), chaired by Prof Scherto Gill, has been actively contributing to policy recommendations relevant to the annual G20 themes.
For 2024, the IF20 Edu WG hosts an international symposium on The Centrality of Harmony in Education in the Global Retreat Centre, Oxford on 1-3 July. It focuses on comprehensive analysis in terms of how Harmony in Education may enhance interfaith/intercultural collaboration, positive peace, inclusive citizenship, climate awareness, and co-flourishing with Nature.
Harmony, in this context, is a philosophy advanced by His Majesty King Charles in his 2010 seminal book entitled: Harmony: A New Way of Looking at our World. The notion of harmony is extremely potent as it allows us to recognise that separation from each other and exploitation of Nature have resulted in present social and ecological catastrophe impacting all. Harmony in Education is thus an imperative for the present and future generations to learn to embrace our interconnection and interdependence and return us to a just world and sustainable planet.
The Symposium gathers IF20 Education Working Group partners, such as ADYAN Foundation, Guerrand-Hermès Foundation, Scholas Occurentes, Salzberg Global Seminar, and other international educational organisations, including King’s Foundation, Harmony Institute, the Harmony Project, Education Policy & Administration, Government of NCT of Delhi, India, and WES Networks Brazil, to explore how Harmony in Education can contribute to 2024 G20’s theme of Just World Sustainable Planet.
During the Symposium, each participant/contributor will make a presentation on their relevant work under the G20 2024’s theme. Then the participants will dialogue and discuss policy ideas around integrating Harmony Education in public schooling.
Questions to be considered during the Symposium:
What are our understandings of harmony in the context of global challenges? How might we integrate harmony in our ways of being?
In what ways does the notion of harmony contribute to the G20 2024 theme – Just Society Sustainable Planet?
How might education help advance harmony?
What policy ideas should we propose to G20 leaders?
What case studies might demonstrate the imperative of harmony in education?
Confirmed Contributors:
Sister Jayanti
Additional Administrative Head, The Brahma Kumaris
Maureen Goodman
UK Director, World Spiritual University
Nick Campion
Director, The Harmony Institute, UWTSD
Isodora Canela
Founder/Director, WEBS Association, Brazil
Richard Dunne
Director, The Harmony Project, UK
Jacqueline Farrell
Director of Education, King’s Foundation, UK
Scherto Gill
Director, Global Humanity for Peace Institute, UK
Medwin Hughes
Former Vice Chancellor, UWTSD Chair, Wales Church, Wales
Mayssam Imad
Director of Education, Adyan Foundation, Lebanon
Maria Paz Jurado
International Director, Pontifical Foundation Scholas Occurrentes, Italy
Robin Keshaw
Project Lead, Education Policy & Administration, Government of NCT of Delhi, India
Xiaoan Li
Senior Programme Officer, Fetzer Institute, USA
Corinna Nawatzky
Center for Education Transformation, Salzberg Global Seminar, Austria
Shailendra Sharma
Former Advisor, Ministry of Education, Delhi, India
Alice Sommerville
Education & Research Coordinator, Guerrand-Hermes Foundation, UK
The Ethics Education Fellowship Programme (EEFP) concludes its first phase with strong country commitments. Held on 23-25 April 2024, the ‘Convening of Champions’ meeting marked a significant milestone in the Ethics Education Fellowship Programme collaboration. The gathering was attended by 70 participants from 17 countries, including senior representatives from Ministries of Education, UNESCO offices, and partner organizations, as well as religious leaders. The event served as a bustling hub for discussing the importance of prioritizing and investing in Ethics Education. Children’s testimonials lit up the room, while participating countries made promising commitments.
During the April convening, the EEFP launched a Report capturing the one-year effort to monitor and evaluate the programme.
Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Report
The GHFP has led the MEL of EEFP in six countries. Supported by the partners, our research team collected comprehensive country-based data for thematic analysis and meaning-making. The MEL Report outlines the key findings from the first phase of the EEFP, and significant learnings emerging from the experiences of the EEFP fellows, participating teachers and children in the classrooms.
In April 2024, the GHfP Institute and Scholasco-piloted a Young Changemakers Programme (YCP) on the UWTSD’s Lampeter Campus.
Young Changemakers Programme (YCP) offers inspirational and transformative learning opportunities that combines encounter, experience, inquiry and action in a circular itinerary. It aims to enhance young people’s self-awareness, mutual appreciation, and understanding of local-global challenges.
Youth from around the planet came together for a one-week experiential learning, arts-based learning, intergenerational dialogue, integrating hands, heart and head into holistic learning experiences. More importantly, Young Changemakers Programme offered these young people an opportunity to bring embodied learning to meaningful actions back in their communities.
Young Changemakers Programme is extremely effective in expanding youth’s horizons, helping youth connect learning with their life’s purpose, recognising that learning is a whole person endeavour and learning contributes to one’s own and one’s community’s well-being.
This high-level event marks a milestone of the Ethics Education Fellowship programme, a unique collaborative effort to promote Ethics Education, essential for fostering global citizenship, and building more inclusive and peaceful societies.
The Fellowship program is made possible through a partnership between the Ministries of Education of Bangladesh, Indonesia, Kenya, Mauritius, Nepal, and Seychelles, with Arigatou International, the Guerrand-Hermès Foundation for Peace, KAICIID International Dialogue Centre, the Muslim Council of Elders, the Higher Committee of Human Fraternity, the UNESCO New Delhi Cluster Office, and the UNESCO Regional Office for Eastern Africa, in collaboration with the National Commissions for UNESCO of the participating countries.
In this event, we will reflect on the importance of ethics education, and its contribution to enriching social cohesion, promoting human fraternity, and empowering children and young people to make a difference in their societies.
This event will provide a space to share challenges, opportunities, and recommendations to transform education, as well as commitments to strengthen national teacher training, policies, and investment in ethics education programs.
Welcome Remarks 09.30 – 10.00 (UAE Time)
H.E. Dr. Ahmad Belhoul Al Falasi (Video Message)
Minister of Education, United Arab Emirates
Sheikh Dr. Ahmed Bin Abdulaziz Al Haddad
Grand Mufti and head of the Fatwa Department at the Dubai Fatwa Centre, Member of Muslim Council of Elders
H.E. Dr. Khalid Al Ghaith
Secretary General of the Higher Committee of Human Fraternity
Mr. Hironari Miyamoto (Video Message)
On behalf of Rev. Keishi Miyamoto, President Arigatou International
Children Representatives (Video Message)
Bangladesh, Indonesia, Mauritius, Nepal, Kenya and Seychelles
Keynote Speech 10.00 – 10.20 (UAE Time)
H. E. Afra Al Saabri (TBC)
Director General, Ministry of Tolerance and Coexistence, Ministry of Tolerance
Ethics Education Fellowship: Insights from the Implementation 10.20 – 10.40 (UAE Time)
Mrs. Mary Kangethe
Director Education, Kenya National Commission for UNESCO
Dr. Itje Chodidjha
Chairperson, Indonesia National Commission for UNESCO
