EDITION

Editorial
Kia Ora Koutou,
This is another awesome edition.
Thanks to all those who have willingly
contributed their articles. I am
sharing this editorial page with my Christina Barruel
two colleagues, Christopher and
Annie, who have both been hard at work engaged in
important projects to progress The Peace Foundation
onwards and upwards.
Please support our Give-a-Little campaign.
Christopher has mentioned more about this below.
Grandparents, parents, teachers and students from
our school communities around New Zealand can
make a huge difference in ‘giving-a-little’ towards
raising money to support more schools in New
Zealand to have the tools for peaceful conflict
resolution through the skills of peer mediation.
Imagine if all students gained awareness of these
skills before leaving school, entering the workforce
and being engaged fully in personal and professional
relationships. What a difference this would make!
Our short video clip says it all…and… it’s the student
voices that are convincing! www.youtube.com/
watch?v=HxJFBn3INHI
I am concerned about the statistics reported in the
media recently, which indicate that New Zealand has
the worst rate of family and intimate partner violence
in the world. And to think that a shocking 80 percent
of incidents go unreported! As New Zealand citizens
who have a collective responsibility to keep our
communities safe, we need to be more pro-active in
aiming to eliminate this ‘violence’ problem. One area
to promote is Peace Education in schools; programmes
that focus on Relationship Education and support the
vision of The New Zealand Curriculum so that young
people will be confident, connected lifelong learners
that make healthy choices and avoid problems in
adolescence, including violence.
Recently, The Peace Foundation has been engaged
in two research projects, the overall aim being to
discover the impact of our two mainstream peace
education programmes: (1) the Cool Schools Peer
Exciting Technology Updates at the
Peace Foundation
The Peace Foundation
administration processes are
currently being re-vamped! Since
March I have been working closely
with our Accountants to update and Annie Ferguson
simplify our bookkeeping and finance
functions. We are doing this by implementing new
software – Xero! Whilst it has been hard work
exporting and importing data from a legacy system
and learning the intricacies of a new system,
the benefits and simplicity of Xero have been
Peace Foundation launches
Crowdfunding project to expand peer
mediation across schools in New
Zealand
As many of you know Peer
Mediation is a home-grown product –
made in NZ. Kids love it and so do the
teachers. We are getting more and
more people letting us know examples
of it being used to diffuse conflict
outside schools, in the community and
2 MediationWORKS
Christopher
Le Breton
off the rugby field (in the changing rooms). The Peer
Mediation Programme was developed by children 20
years ago and continues to work powerfully. That is
its strength.
So, with this fantastic feedback, we have just
launched our $300,000 crowdfunding project to
do three things:
Mediation Programme for primary schools, and (2)
the Leadership through Peer Mediation Programme
(LtPM) for secondary schools. (Refer to Page 3
opposite for more information on this research work.)
I have been amazed at the testimonials, received
during the data gathering process from teachers,
programme coordinators, guidance counsellors,
principals, students, and current and former student
peer mediators, which exemplify the positive impacts
of learning peaceful conflict resolution skills at school.
We can certainly reduce this ‘violence’ problem by
engaging youth as part of the solution. The following
are a sample of some significant quotes:
“Peer mediation and the leadership within our school
makes a significant contribution to two of our core
values whanaungatanga and manaakitanga. It has
been incredibly rewarding to see students thrive,
grow in confidence and feel that their own dignity is
enhanced.” Teacher (secondary)
“I think it would benefit the school community as a
whole if more students could train to be mediators.
There are only limited spaces each year because of
funding. More students could benefit from the training
where the skills they learn have a ripple effect into their
homes and our community helping our young people
to be more caring, understanding, accepting citizens.”
Programme coordinator (secondary)
“Oh yes, the skills I have learnt have influenced my
teaching effectiveness and my marriage. It has helped
me to not jump to conclusions and not to blame other
people.” Programme coordinator (primary)
“The LtPM training and programme contributes
significantly to student wellbeing! It creates belonging,
connectedness and social responsibility.” Student
peer mediator (secondary)
“I use the skills I've learnt in my personal life all the
time. As a trainee doctor being able to build rapport
and understand different personality types has been
invaluable. I still reference my peer mediation training
when we have professional and communication skills
assessments!” Former peer mediator (secondary)
immediately apparent. And if your school is also a
Xero user, transactions can be even easier.
Significant work is also happening on our website.
The look has been modernised and an online payment
system activated. This means it will be easier to find
out what we are up to and will provide much quicker
access to resources for our partnership schools. We
also hope to have online training registration active
prior to the 2017 school year.
These improvements will allow for more efficient
processing of all schools’ transactions, whether
booking a training, ordering resources or paying
invoices. We invite any school using Xero to contact
1. Get peer mediation skills taught in a further 160
schools across NZ
2. Develop a project to get peer mediation to every
school in the country.
3. Transform our website to make it much more
interactive and accessible to students, teachers,
parents and peaceworkers.
With your help, we will be able to recruit two full
time teacher trainers to join the team, replace our
tired Cool Schools car, get some modern computers,
and pay our staff a living wage!
We’d also like to make a workplace programme
available, to tackle the high levels of violence in our
communities, to help reconcile and heal.
You can help too. Give up a coffee for a day
(or a week) and pledge the savings to our givealitte
initiative:
www.givealittle.co.nz/project/peacefoundation
“One student in particular who has had anger
issues, he was in my classroom last year and I did
a lot of work with him using the skills from our
peer mediation program. This year he is in year
6 and he has become a peer mediator. All of my
fellow teachers cannot believe how much he has
evolved.” Programme coordinator (primary)
“Being a peer mediator has made me be more
responsible. I have learnt new stuff, and helped
the school to be a safer place with no one fighting
and punching.” Student peer mediator
(primary)
I would like to thank the following individuals
for their valuable support in assisting with these
two research projects: Dr Helene Connor (Unitec
Institute of Technology), Lyndon Burford (PhD
Candidate, International Relations, University
of Auckland), Marie Nassanka (PhD Candidate,
National Centre of Peace and Conflict Studies,
University of Otago), Dr Gillian Tasker, and Peace
Foundation interns Leo Buccahan, Katherine
Matthews and Samantha McKinlay.
Our hope and vision is that the findings from
these two reports will encourage the Ministry
of Education, in particular, to fund our peace
education programmes in schools nationwide.
The need is there. It is time.
Arohanui, Christina Barruel
Head of Peace Education
Student peer mediators from Otahuhu College
us so that we can directly
connect.
In addition we are actively
seeking to connect with as
many schools as possible via
Facebook. Connecting will
allow us to see and support
your schools’ activities and we can keep you up
to date with ours. You can connect with us at The
Peace Foundation @PeaceFoundationNZ and we will
connect with you in return.
Annie Ferguson
Co-General Manager, IT and Administration
And watch our clip here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxJFBn3INHI
Thank you. In partnership for peace.
Ngā Mihi. Best wishes.
Christopher Le Breton
Co-General Manager, Funding, Partnerships and
Peace Development.
2016 WINTER edition