One World Dialogue works within four program areas:

  • Peace through Art 

  • Peace through Education 

  • Peace through Community Development 

  • Peace through Creativity & Innovation  

Art for Peace 

To create a culture of peace, we must first imagine it. The arts can help us do this for ourselves and for future generations. 

OWD's arts programs have shown much success in achieving this new way of thinking. 

To date, OWD has organized four International Peace Day art exhibitions, where integrative thinking and the creation of a space to promote dialogue have been employed. 

The art exhibitions bring various groups of artists from different artistic styles and backgrounds (professional, emerging, youth, aboriginal, immigrant, refugee, developmental disability artists, etc.) together to explore a topic rather than a common artistic theme or style of work. 

 

Educating Peace 

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world" - Nelson Mandela 

Integrative thinking as the approach to developing education programming is what makes OWD unique, imparting tools and skills that can be applied to any aspect of life. This approach to education is about helping teachers and community organizers teach students how to engage with an ambiguous and changing world. This is about teaching youth how to have a dialogue and learn to appreciate the ideas of others and find intersections. OWD's education approach to decision-making, helps youth wade through complexity with creativity, rigour and optimism. At the core, integrative thinking is the ability to reject unattractive trade-offs, working instead to generate new and better ideas from the existing choices. This approach and process encourages people to seek out and leverage new perspectives and to broaden their problem-solving strategies. 

By connecting this approach to ideas of peace and social challenges, makes it unmatched to any other program available. The goal is to help youth solve the kinds of problems that are messy and complex - that have no answers at the back of a book. 

We have been working with the approach of visual-thinking strategies, engaging artists and using creative methods to help youth explore and express their ideas. Our programs are suitable for youth ages 5-18 and youth and adults with developmental disabilities. 

 

Peaceful Communities 

Strengthening the resilience and capacity of communities is essential in achieving a 'culture of peace'. 

OWD seeks to develop relationships, collaborations and programs and services that encourage, initiate and facilitate community and economic development with a view to creating community services that are focused on building socially responsible, sustainable and vibrant communities. 

OWD works to bring our unique approach, perspective and experiences to supplement and innovate the programs and services of other not-for-profit organizations and/or government agencies. 

Broadly, OWD supports community development in the following ways: 

  • Exhibition Curation 
  • Education 
    • curriculum development (K-12) 
    • creative facilitation 
    • program design, training and/or program delivery 
  • Conference/Workshop design and program development 
  • Research and Analysis 
  • Stakeholder Engagement 
  • Governance 
  • Strategy Development 
  • Social Enterprise Development 
  • Project Management 

The above service areas are also applied in an international development context: 

  • Education and Training 
  • Conference / Workshops 
  • Gender 
  • Civil Society 
  • Public Service and Government 
  • Project Management 
  • Public Safety 

 

Innovating Peace

OWD strives to be a catalyst and lab for developing value driven thinking that fosters an integrative approach and utilizes creativity, innovation, technology and design as mechanisms to develop leadership thinking and building a 'culture of peace'. 

OWD empowers people and organizations to consider issues differently, holistically, and examine how we think and what alternative considerations can be made to enable an environment that ensures systems, structures, policies and practices at various levels (local, national, global) to support and protect a 'culture of peace'.