Promoting Enduring Peace (PEPeace.org) is seeking an environmental movement representative, a youth/student representative, and a peace education representative to join its Board of Directors.
Since its founding in 1952, Promoting Enduring Peace (PEP) has been a nationally focused tax-exempt peace education organization and United Nations NGO based in New Haven, Connecticut. Its mission is to conduct peace education promoting the advent of a harmonious planetary commonwealth through the convergence of the worldwide movements for disarmament, social justice, and environmental stewardship as the foundation of sustainable peace.
PEPeace programming has primarily been focused in three areas: citizen diplomacy (guided travel to spots relevant to struggles for peace); the presentation of the Gandhi Peace Award; and peace education activities such as public events, invitational symposiums, and mass mailings of peace literature. (Peace literature is now distributed via PEPeace's daily news service, PeaceNews.org.)
PEP was founded specifically to resist the tide drawing civilization into World War III and in its first half-century accomplished great things to that end; for example, PEP sent over 10 million pieces of peace education material to recipients in many nations and led conferences and peace travel that garnered international coverage. PEP also participates actively in peace movement activities in the Northeastern U.S. and elsewhere.
In the 21st Century PEP reoriented its mission to focus on the interdependence of world peace and environmental harmony and the threats generated by an unsustainable global civilization, reflected in the organization's motto: "Peace on Earth — Peace with Earth." That motto is meant to express the need for the peace and environmental movements to come together, based on the idea that war and its preparations and aftermath are the primary source of environmental devastation, and environmental misuse and resulting resource competition are a major underlying cause of war.
The present mission looks toward the reconfiguring civilization to ensure its long-term sustainability, making this a unique historical period—perhaps the culmination of civilization as we have known it, for good or ill.
PEP has a remarkable and distinguished history, a basic endowment, part-time staff, an active social networking presence, and a refreshed vision of what promoting an enduring peace requires. Its Board seeks to build relationships with others who support PEP's mission and who are determined to work toward the decisive changes a sustainable civilization will require. To help lead that outreach, PEPeace seeks three new members of its Board of Directors, representing the perspectives of the environmental movement, youth, and the profession of peace education. (One individual could represent more than one.) Their challenge will be to help PEPeace build cooperative alliances that advance PEPeace's mission by changing the ways people think about what is threatened, what is needed and what is possible to redesign the systems of civilization for compassionate sustainability.
The Board positions we seek to fill need not involve neither fundraising nor putting-up-posters-stuffing-envelopes sorts of activities. Rather we seek people who can imaginatively guide PEP from their particular perspectives as together we seek practical, effective ways to implement its world-changing mission in the coming years. The Board meets once per month and stays in touch between meetings via an active email group. A Board member can reside anywhere in the U.S., participating in person or via teleconference and videoconference. The initial term for a Board member is one year, renewable for additional terms of three years.
