Education is a powerful tool available to fight global poverty. Unfortunately, millions of young people are deprived of the access to quality education owing to cost of enrolment or tuition, resulting in frustration and by extension, illiterate and an uninformed society. Fortunately, Moral Re-Armament/Initiatives of Change, Nigeria, is stepping forward to bring hope and alleviate their related hardship in this regard by providing grants aimed at giving hope to the dreams of brilliant, intelligent indigent Nigerians. This grant will support deserving qualified students in the realization of their potential. The deadline for the current application cycle is 30 November 2021.

Initiatives of Change Australia (IofCA) completed its two-year partnership with the Southern Migrant and Refugee Centre in Dandenong, Victoria, with an online session of food and art on 20 August. The event highlighted how far Creators of Peace has come in adapting Peace Circles to an online format—and the need for more peace, as politics and the global pandemic take their toll.

We are pleased to present you the Trustbuilding Program's Impact Report for 2020/2021

Lillian has countless stories about the impact of the ‘miracle train’, as many call it: the uncontrollable schoolchildren who turned out to need glasses, and later won scholarships; the passive physically challenged children whose faces lit up when they were given crayons; the traditional healers who learnt how to avoid infection and now boast that they are ‘Phelophepa doctors’; the students who worked late into the night when a busload of patients arrived after hours; the student optician who helped his patients choose flattering glasses. ‘Things like that make people feel tall and loved,’ she says. ‘It was not just treating people, it was giving people dignity and self-respect.’

he Creators of Peace (CoP) women's initiative was launched in 1991 at the Initiatives of Change conference centre in Caux, Switzerland by the Hon Anna Abdallah Msekwa of Tanzania, a respected politician and leader of her country's women's organizations. In her inaugural speech, she urged everyone to 'create peace wherever we are, in our hearts, our homes, our workplace and our community. We all pretend that someone else is the stumbling block… Could that someone be myself?'
CoP is now a global network of people working on different continents through Creators of Peace Circles, workshops, personal encounters, community building activities and international conferences

A battery production business in a sub-Saharan African country was saved from closure, thanks to the intervention of a well-established NGO (Non-Governmental Organization). The battery company was owned by a multinational, which was keen to offload it. The batteries were for agricultural and industrial use but, with economic decline in the country, the company was not doing well.

The current reality is generational transfer of present and past unhealed traumas, lack of parenting skills, broken families and a search for identity and belonging, among young people in particular. Thus, the focus of the Trustbuilding project that is on inner healing, justice, and trustbuilding between parent/guardian and child - rebuilding trust and broken structures in the family as a foundation for a more just and peaceful society.

The Project aims at healing the wounds and addressing the psycho-social, economic and political consequences of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and slave history. The focus is on creating pathways towards mutual recovery and cultural and institutional transformation. It is supported by a number of partners, and guided by an Advisory Board consisting of multi-disciplinary experts.

Olivienhoutbosch, south-west of Pretoria, is a community that has many orphans, single parents and fatherless children – people who have come from other provinces and countries to seek work and to further their studies. Gender based violence, depression and anger are prevalent. Yet the commitment of these groups were commendable as each morning they came with an open heart and an inquisitive mind, saying, ‘I am looking forward to learning more today’.

I find the notion of life can often be to understand the pattern you are being given. During times when the path ahead has been unclear, the most helpful advice I’ve received is, ‘Dig where you stand’ and ‘To thine own self be true’ ‘solving for pattern’ useful in personal discernment, too. A key to discerning the next step in.