The work of everyday gandhis coheres around the following understandings: that true peace does not come from treaties and government negotiations but is built by ordinary, everyday people; that stories and images of peace can awaken and sustain the peacemaker within each of us; that the healing of the natural world and the healing of humans are inextricably linked; that traditional culture and nature itself are the most reliable sources of guidance; and that former combatants, especially former child soldiers, are gifted and rightful peacemakers. 

What makes us unique is that all our work is developed in consultation with local elders, diviners, healers and community members, including the community of the ancestors and Nature. Our intention is to mirror to the community their innate peacebuilding capacity and the wisdom of their traditional culture and the natural world. We seek to create a model of peacebuilding relationships that replicates natural systems, according to the ancient African traditions of ‘ubuntu’, meaning, “I am because you are, and you are because I am” and the Liberian understanding that “If I am healed, I can heal 20 people, who, in turn, can heal 20 people, and so on…”

Through dreaming, divination, ritual, story and council, Liberians are creating and implementing a vibrant vision of peace that is both highly reliable and essentially dialogic, replacing at last the outmoded ‘expert’ – driven, top-down models of post-conflict restoration. We also work on a 100+ year timeline. This means that the land, the water, the animals, the dead, the living and the unborn are actively taking part in shared leadership that holds itself fully accountable to all forms of life in all realms throughout time.

Those of us from the West understand that, while some aspects of modern Western culture are useful, many are so destructive that we must attend to healing ourselves and our Western mindset. We are grateful to our Liberian colleagues for being such generous and patient teachers.