Karuna Center’s approach to peacebuilding aims to assist communities and societies create a sustainable peace. Karuna Center works in every stage of a conflict – analyzing and addressing the root causes of tension, leading interventions to prevent further violent escalation, and encouraging reconciliation.

Mission & Approach

Our Mission and Purpose

The Karuna Center for Peacebuilding is committed to the development and implementation of innovative, sustainable strategies for community reconciliation and transformation in societies where ethnic, religious and sectarian conflicts threaten the possibility of stable democracy. Since 1993 we have pioneered effective multi-sector training programs that promote genuine dialogue, reconciliation, cooperative problem solving, and nonviolent solutions in over 20 troubled or war-torn countries. Working by invitation and in partnership with in-country organizations, the Karuna Center leads peacebuilding trainings and dialogue workshops specifically designed to foster trust and communication between conflicting groups and to promote inter-communal projects that can advance a healthy civil society capable of supporting viable democratic institutions.

Our Strategy

There are four key factors in our strategy:

1) Partnering - Karuna Center programs arise in response to requests from in-country groups or organizations. We maximize the building of local capacity by engaging those who will have the broadest and most significant impact in their particular communities, collaborating with them to design trainings that are specifically suited and appropriate to the local situation as well as to Karuna's areas of expertise;

2) Conflict Transformation- Our peacebuilding trainings and workshops carefully interweave experiential learning with pivotal conceptual material on conflict analysis as well as skill-building strategies for responding to conflict. At the same time we always remain fully engaged with the immediacy of lives deeply impacted by conflict, violence, and trauma;

3) Dialogue

- Central to the work of Karuna Center is the skillful use of facilitated, structured dialogues. People very often enter our trainings carrying deep hurts, resentments, feelings of enmity or even desires for revenge toward another community or group whose members may themselves be in the training with similar feelings. During well-facilitated dialogues participants can come to a profound recognition of the essential humanity of the other, to a sense of mutuality and common purpose, and to a willingness to move forward together. We therefore see dialogue not as an end in itself but as a means toward action and social change;

4) Cascade Model

- Most programs last at least two-three years and conclude with a "training of trainers" in which the strongest participants are given intensive training in design and facilitation skills and then mentored as they develop their own trainings and projects, thereby greatly expanding the impact of the work.

Our Impact

Former participants of Karuna Center programs not only bring social healing to their communities, but also facilitate dialogues and teach peacebuilding skills throughout their countries. They are thereby helping to build a critical mass of people committed to promoting peace and justice and preventing future violence. Some have gone on to found their own peacebuilding organizations and remain vital Karuna Center partners.

Our Benchmarks of Success

We look for evidence of our training's effectiveness in four areas:

1) Attitudinal and Behavioral Change - During our trainings, particularly in the facilitated dialogues, observable shifts occur from suspicion and hostility to understanding and cooperative relationships. These are key to the further unfolding of the conflict transformation process and become the basis for the new behaviors;

2) Length of Participation -We expect a high percentage (80-90%) to sustain participation throughout a two to three year program;

3) Participants' Own Projects -the extent to which mentored participants carry out significant and well-designed peacebuilding projects and trainings in their own locales;

4) Evaluation Procedures - Karuna Center currently employs a variety of data collection instruments and methods to assess the immediate effectiveness and long-term impact of its trainings. In addition, our evaluations include a participatory process whereby all involved, whether as trainers, trainees, or other key stakeholders in the community can: a) reflect on the past and on personal and societal changes relating to the project; b) generate knowledge of lessons learned and possible improvements; and c) identify project strengths and opportunities for future action.