Maria Kontarini
PEACE PROJECT 21 - A Peace Project for the 21st Century
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The Peace Project 21 (PP21) represents both a continuation and an evolution of a journey that began in the 1980s with the Carl Rogers Institute for Peace, co-founded and co-directed by Carl Rogers and Gay Barfield.
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In response to the global disruptions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, Gay Barfield initiated a series of online gatherings in 2020 to explore the relevance of the Person-Centered Approach (PCA) to peace in today’s world. These gatherings brought together original staff from earlier iterations of the Peace Project, facilitators of various PCA initiatives, and a new generation of peace-oriented PCA practitioners and advocates.
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What began as a space for dialogue and mutual encounter soon expanded into a broader initiative. It seeks to build upon the earlier models and pilots of Rogers and Barfield by addressing peacemaking from a holistic perspective—one that integrates interpersonal and relational conditions, human needs, and structural as well as cultural dimensions.
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Historical cases highlight the necessity of this multidimensional approach. The Steel Shutter project, along with the assassinations of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981 and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, demonstrate that neither a bottom-up approach nor a top-down approach can achieve sustainable peace in isolation. Rather, both must operate simultaneously, in synergy and harmony.
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In this spirit, PP21 envisions convening international peace dialogues that span from grassroots participation to the highest levels of leadership. These efforts are inspired by historical gatherings such as the 1985 Rust workshop in Austria and the 1988 meeting in Costa Rica, where then-President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Óscar Arias welcomed the group to the Presidential Palace.
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The aim of these peace conferences is to create systems in which power in governance and international relations is exercised as power with rather than power over. The PCA can serve as both a methodology and a way of being—acting as a midwife for creativity, cooperation, and the emergence of new practices at small scales, which can then be amplified through advocacy and communication to broader contexts.
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Access our Chronicles to learn more about PP21.
​​Chronicles →
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Browse the material to learn more about PCA and peacemaking.
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As I end this page, I want to share two quotes that sustain me in today's reality and inspire my work in the Peace Project 21.
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"The kind of hope I often think about-especially in situations that are particularly hopeless- is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart. Hope is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises headed for early success; rather, it is the ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed". Vaclav Havel​​​​​​
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"The Arc of the Moral Universe is Long, but it Bends Toward Justice." Martin Luther King Jr
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