Our mission:
To support and share the work of peacebuilders, educators, artists, technologists and other civic actors to co-create peaceful, resilient societies.
Our focus is on supporting emotionally intelligent, arts-based approaches to dialogue, conflict transformation and social healing, which can be widely shared and scaled through the use of technology.
Why this intersection?
• Most tech-for-good initiatives lack emotional intelligence and cultural nuance
• Most arts initiatives lack access to systemic infrastructure and digital scale
• Most peacebuilding work remains siloed from design and innovation thinking
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Peaceable has been developed in response to the urgent need for new approaches to peacebuilding that reflect the complexity of modern conflict and the accelerating deployment of technology in communications and human connection. The rapid arrival of AI poses an additional challenge for us all: how to ensure that it is a positive development in our current situation.
At Peaceble, we believe that fast-moving technologies often create more disconnection than connection, despite their extraordinary reach. They often fail to address emotional, cultural and human relational dimensions of conflicts that emerge in their wake. For this reason, it is our mission to support the embedding of emotional intelligence and space for creativity and imagination within new technologies as they emerge, reinforcing the need for human connection as the foundation of sustainably peaceful societies.
Peaceable aims to serve local and global peacebuilders, civic groups, educators, artists, technologists and engaged citizens in their mission to address challenges of division, social unrest and conflict within communities. As an income-generating social enterprise, we will be achieving this vision by provding an online resource hub for all those committed to building peace, justice and inclusion in their communities and environments.
Why Peaceable?
Across the globe, societies face rising division, mistrust and disconnection on an everyday level. Whether driven by inequality, misinformation or identity-based conflict, communities and institutions are struggling to respond with effective tools to maintain long-term peaceable societies. At present, technology - and the language it uses - too often exacerbates the dynamics of polarisation, radicalisation and violent conflict.
Peace is not only a moral prerogative and a precondition for human well-being; it is economically advantageous for all. Recent global conflicts in 2023 alone cost the world $19.1 trillion, equivalent to the entire economy of the European Union and roughly $2,380 per person worldwide. Societies riven by civil conflict can see GDP per capita losses of up to 45% over ten years.
Technology, while powerful, is often emotionally disconnected and ethically blind. Those dedicated to work for peace often find themselves in a sector which is highly siloed, often operating in parallel rather than in collaboration. As a vastly underfunded field, peacebuilding very often lacks a shared infrastructure, language or physical and virtual spaces in which to co-create scalable, emotionally intelligent solutions to conflict.
One side effect of being under-resourced is is a critical gap in our efforts to building and sustain peaceable societies - the absence of human-centred, culturally and emotionally informed solutions to conflict, and especially those that can scale across local and global contexts.