Engaging Nonviolence: Activating Nonviolent Change in Our Lives and Our World
Engaging Nonviolence: Activating Nonviolent Change in Our Lives and Our World
An indispensable sequel to the classic study guide Engage: Exploring Nonviolent Living
Pace e Bene’s Newest Nonviolence Study Guide!
By Veronica Pelicaric and Nina Koevoets
Publisher: Pace e Bene Press (2019)
ISBN-13: 978-0-9978337-2-0
Pages: 230
Language: Engaging Nonviolence is currently only available in English
Order your copy of Engaging Nonviolence today! Group discounts of 20% off also available with orders of 5 or more (Use promo code: X9TR5EF ).
The Engaging Nonviolence Study Program is a fifteen-part study and action guide offering participants a wide variety of principles, stories, exercises, and readings for learning, practicing, and experimenting with the power of creative nonviolence for personal and social transformation.
In this book you will learn powerful methods for opposing violence and injustice and for building just and peaceful nonviolent alternatives. Engaging Nonviolence is designed to build your capacity to use these methods to address the direct, structural or cultural violence that matters most to you. We invite you to embark on this exploration and experimentation with nonviolence.
This book is designed with a small-group learning process in mind and will help within a wide range of contexts and settings. It can be led either by people with minimal facilitation experience or by those with a significant background in leading group processes.
Each session is around 2 to 2 1/2 hours in length and starts with clear directions for every element and exercise. In general, a session has the following structure:
It begins with a short welcome and gives an overview of the session.
This is followed by an opening process that offers centering and focus. Sometimes this includes a quote, or some kind of meditative reflection.
Each session then offers multiple styles of learning and being: large-group exercises, nonviolence story-telling, small-group reflections, times of creative expression (using various art media), role-plays, and debriefing. In all of these segments, we often encourage participants to reflect on and honor their own life experience.
The last part of each session focuses on closure and preparation for the next session. Participants are invited to track their progress through journaling. In a few instances they are also asked to read the required material for the next gathering.
Please note: there is no separate facilitator guide or participant guide. One book can be used for both and we encourage everyone within a group to have their own copy.
If you have specific questions about the book, contact us at info@paceebene.org
Explore Inside Engaging Nonviolence
Read the Foreword by Ken Butigan and A Note from the Authors [PDF]
Read the Organizing a Study Group and Facilitation Guidelines [PDF]
Promote Engaging Nonviolence
Share Your Feedback After Using Engaging Nonviolence (Coming Soon)
Additional Resources
View or Download a PowerPoint to help guide you through the sessions.
Links Mentioned in the Book
Session 2:
Session 4:
Erica Chenoweth, “The success of nonviolent civil resistance”
Jamilia Raqib, “The Secret to Effective Nonviolent Resistance”
Julia Bacha, “Pay attention to Nonviolence”
Session 5:
Session 6:
Session 7:
Session 8:
Session 10:
Session 11:
Session 12:
Session 13:
The Authors
Veronica Pelicaric
Veronica Pelicaric, born in Italy, raised in Argentina and now a Canadian citizen, has been a long-time staff member of Pace e Bene leading nonviolence trainings around the world, and co-authoring Engage: Exploring Nonviolent Living and Engaging Nonviolence. Her passion for creating peace has taken her from a Cree community in Northern Manitoba down to Patagonia, across the USA, South America and Europe. She has trained as a Transpersonal Psychotherapist and has been a Zen student for thirty years.
Nina Koevoets
Nina Koevoets has been studying nonviolence and conflict resolution for more than a decade. Her master in Conflict Resolution did not include what regular people can do to build peace, so she sought answers elsewhere. She joined a training program with the Metta Center for Nonviolence in the USA and worked several months in India and Israel-Palestine. These experiences gave her new perspectives and ideas about the challenges and potential of nonviolent action. In 2015 she implemented her own training courses that included exercises from the Engage Study Program. As she became more familiar with the materials by facilitating several trainings and workshops the idea for a new Study Program became more clear and so this book came into existence.
PRAISE FOR ENGAGING NONVIOLENCE...
“Everyone involved in working for social change and addressing the issues and challenges we face in our world today should read this superb publication. It is written by two passionate advocates and practitioners, Veronica Pelicaric and Nina Koevoets, each with years of training, coaching and inspiring people in the field. The book is a hands-on practical guide that can help community organizers and anyone working to overcome systems, structures and practices of violence through proven and effective nonviolent approaches to achieving change. For all who dream of and work for a better world, this is one of the tools that can help us know how to get there. I encourage all of us to read it, use it, and share it widely, so it can reach communities and civic organisations around the world, as well as schools, to train new generations to work for positive change in the world.”
- Kai Brand-Jacobsen, one of the leading pioneers, innovators and practitioners in the field of peacebuilding, security and addressing challenging and complex conflicts and crisis in the world today. He is currently the Director of the Department for Peace Operations of the Peace Action, Training and Research Institute of Romania PATRIR.
"In this world addicted to violence, how do we challenge the violence, war and injustice in our society and our world nonviolently? Engaging Nonviolence is a very useful resource for you and your friends, colleagues, fellow students or members of your faith community to gain the understanding and skills to live and act nonviolently and powerfully to create a more just and peaceful world. VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! Together we Shall Overcome!"
- David Hartsough, author of Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist and Co-founder of Nonviolent Peaceforce and World Beyond War
“The last thirty or so years have seen a remarkable and long-overdue outpouring of work on nonviolence -- histories, scholarly studies, plans and strategies for organization and action. Engaging Nonviolence is a welcome addition in a category we need more of, and urgently: a how-to manual on organizing and conducting nonviolent learning and training sessions. I cannot think of a detail not covered by this manual, from changing our perceptions, to introducing the key concepts and images that convey them, to how to arrange the chairs at your sessions. All this is built on the long, careful experience of the authors and Pace e Bene in doing just this and carrying through with important actions. I greet it with enthusiasm, and hope it will be read, and put to work, in communities around the country and beyond.”
- Michael Nagler, Founder of the Metta Center
“Engaging Nonviolence is an ambitious manual guiding people and movements facing challenges such as the climate crisis, structural injustices or authoritarianism. It is a valuable resource for social justice activists working on a range of topics and causes, and a collection of hands-on experiences and training sessions within the program of Pace e Bene, emanating from a rich and wholistic approach to grassroot education. Nonviolence is shown to be both a way of life and a pragmatic strategy to achieve social justice. This manual is an updated version, now more adapted to international needs and the experiences made by the authors, focused on detailed descriptions of tools and concepts, directions for exercises, and a suggested study program with sessions. It is well written and clearly structured.”
- Stellan Vinthagen, Endowed Chair in the Study of Nonviolent Direct Action and Civil Resistance, Professor of Sociology at University of Massachusetts, Amherst and at University of Gothenburg, Sweden
"Engaging Nonviolence is an essential training manual for everyone, everywhere. Blending the political, cultural, and spiritual dimensions of nonviolence, the book is rich and meaningful. It offers tangible skills and pragmatic exercises for people in a wide range of settings The content is deep, diverse, and thorough. It draws on movements and true stories from around the world. Its approachable step-by-step instructions for guiding a small-group learning process make Engaging Nonviolence the very best book for teaching and exploring nonviolence in your community. I highly recommend this book!"
- Rivera Sun, nonviolence trainer and author
“This excellent study guide "Engaging Nonviolence" offers practical ways to harness the energy of communities, social movements, and human connection to change the world for the better. Its big-picture perspective on nonviolence provides a refreshing antidote to 'us-versus-them' thinking, and lays the foundation for transforming those political, social, and economic systems that stifle human happiness.”
- Helena Norberg-Hodge, author, researcher and founder of Local Futures
“At this time in our world history it is imperative to include in early education reform, curricula such as this excellent method "Engaging Nonviolence" by Pace e Bene Press. By teaching these nonviolent and conflict resolution practices youth will learn to participate in innovative civic action as peace builders, leaders & global citizens from an educated and skillful standpoint.
In doing so, people will raise the consciousness of humanity to build an evolved world of shared values, diversity, dignity and solidarity devoid of terrorism, violence & fear. It is time for these new solutions to cyclical warring, to uphold the nonviolent mindset and wield united heart power, to ‘wage peace’- to emerge triumphant from a cult of war to a thriving Culture of Peace.”
- Georgina Galanis, Cultural Curator, educator + founding peace advocate for Global Movement for the Culture of Peace - UN HQ Hub
“Nonviolence is a stand against violence without using violence. But it is more than this. It is a vibrant, passionate way of being. It is creative problem-solving. It is active, surprising, serious, and powerful. Hence the title of this book. Nonviolence is engaging. It does not shy away from conflict….It grapples with the violence and injustice in our lives and our world, by exposing and challenging injustice in creative ways that allow the situation to change and transform.... This book is offered as a powerful resource for the critically important engagement we are all called to in this time of crisis and opportunity.”
- From the foreword by Ken Butigan, strategist for Campaign Nonviolence and long-time staff member of Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service
“Engaging Nonviolence: Activating Nonviolent Change in Our Lives and Our World is an intersectional, inclusive, and insightful guide to understanding and achieving nonviolent peacemaking. It is a heart-based approach to activism, with exercises to center oneself, so that one can act from a place of peace. These lessons and trainings are exactly the kind of lessons we need to teach especially to our youth to equip themselves with tools to help them pave a path towards peace, and avoid future conflict. “
- Kasha Sequoia Slavner - Filmmaker & Founder The Global Sunrise Project
"Engaging Nonviolence is a goldmine of a handbook for anyone wanting to catalyze or deepen the practice of nonviolence. It is refreshingly practical, accessible, and thorough, with an application that spans borders and continents. It will both embolden the most novice facilitator and serve as a foundational resource for the most experienced peace-builder. I am excited to see it become a core resource for communities across Africa and the world. "
- Tana Paddock, Co-founder of Organization Unbound
