The Waging Peace Project
Creating the good the world is waiting for
The Waging Peace Project™ is dedicated to building multiracial, interfaith, women-led solutions to injustice and violence.
Our Initiatives:
1. the Department of peace
The Department of Peace recruits ordinary people to become Peace Officers in their local community. We believe conflict is normal, violence is not.
We provide missions (practical calls to action) that will help you show up to build a community free of violence and discrimination and full of joy.
Instead of preparing people to go to war, we enlist people to fight for peace right where they live through service, and practical actions.
War has recruitment. Peace should too.
2. Guns to Garden Tools Duluth
Imagine turning a sword into a plough?
Donate a gun, get a garden tool!
We transform guns into garden tools, art & jewelry.
We offer blacksmithing demonstrations so others can heal and transform gun violence.
3. Peace Hero Awards
The Duluth Peace Hero Award is an annual cash prize given in recognition to a local community member who is “making a positive change” right where they live.
Nominated by their peers, friends, or family for their effort and their impact, the winner of this award will be awarded a cash prize of $1,000.
4. Drum major for peace scholarship
We celebrate Peace in Action — and our Youth are bold enough to practice it.
Your Purpose counts: not your grades.
This $1,000 scholarship is for youth who choose courage over comfort, compassion over cruelty, and nonviolence over indifference.
Apply Now and Be a Drum Major for Peace.
More ways to join us
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Read our founder’s Book
Waging Peace: One Soldier’s Story of Putting Love First
Diana Oestreich, a combat medic in the Army National Guard, enlisted like both her parents before her. But when she was commanded to run over an Iraqi child to keep her convoy rolling and keep her battle buddies safe, she was confronted with a choice she never thought she'd have to make.
Torn between God's call to love her enemy and her country's command to be willing to kill, Diana chose to wage peace in a place of war. For the remainder of her tour of duty, Diana sought to be a peacemaker--leading to an unlikely and beautiful friendship with an Iraqi family.
A beautiful and gut-wrenching memoir, Waging Peace exposes the false divide between loving our country and living out our higher call to love our enemies--whether we perceive our enemy as the neighbor with an opposing political viewpoint, the clerk wearing a head-covering, or the refugee from a war-torn country. By showing that us-versus-them is a false choice, this book will inspire each of us to choose love over fear.
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