This project examines how peacebuilding practitioners can respond to trauma in communities affected by ongoing conflict, historical harm, and structural violence. Through semi-structured qualitative interviews with peacebuilding practitioners, the study aims to explore how trauma-responsive facilitation is understood and the knowledge, skills, and professional judgment practitioners use when trauma arises during dialogue, mediation, reconciliation, and other interpersonal peacebuilding processes. The goal is to develop a framework for trauma-responsive peacebuilding that reflects the realities of collective and ongoing trauma and can ultimately inform training, measurement, and future research.

Are you a peacebuilding practitioner and interested in participating? Please reach out to Christine Kindler at cmkindler@alaska.edu. 

This project evaluates EMPOWER, a psychosocial support and reconciliation program developed in Rwanda to help people affected by the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi process trauma, build empathy, and strengthen relationships across communities. The intervention was developed by the Christian Action for Reconciliation and Social Assistance (CARSA) has been consistently implemented across Rwanda since 2017 with survivors and their direct perpetrators from the genocide. While the program has shown promising effects on forgiveness, reconciliation, trauma symptoms, and attitudes toward others, facilitators have also observed changes in participants’ family relationships, communication, conflict resolution, community engagement, and spiritual lives. As EMPOWER is being expanded to include other members of the community, including spouses of past participants, community leaders, and youth, the current study will formally examine these additional outcomes to better understand how EMPOWER may support healing and relationship-building not only between survivors and perpetrators, but also among families and communities affected by the genocide.