War and peacebuilding

by Milt Lauenstein

This  Website 

Throughout history, warfare has caused untold human suffering. In recent decades, the number of organizations dedicated to promoting peace has proliferated. However, without a common strategy, set of priorities, or plans, their hard work has not significantly 

reduced the amount of armed conflict in the world.

There are encouraging signs that this may be changing. This website is intended to facilitate a sharing of ideas about how such change may be accelerated. Send your suggestions for posting in the Blogs by filing out the form here.

Mission

My mission is to contribute to the reduction of armed conflict by encouraging and funding efforts to:

Collaborate

Promote collaboration, including working toward developing a shared strategy, set of priorities, and plans.

Research

Do research to develop information that will be useful to peacebuilders as they decide where and how to work so as to achieve best results.

Localize

Develop more support for locally led peacebuilding and for peacebuilding work more broadly.

Research

Promoting research that will be useful to peacebuilders' decision-making.
 

Locally led peacebuilding

Local citizens can design, lead, and implement actions to prevent escalation of disputes in their communities into armed conflict.
 

Collaboration

 

Promoting collaboration among peacebuilding organizations to develop common strategies, priorities, plans, and programs.

Projects

Impact:Peace, an initiative aimed at significantly improving the effectiveness of peacebuilding work. 
It will work with practitioners, funders, and policymakers to identify the processes within the peacebuilding field that have the most potential for real impact on the ground. It will create a powerful, agile, evidence-based infrastructure to accelerate and amplify these change processes. Its ultimate goal is to significantly reduce violent conflict worldwide.
 

    • Purdue Peace Project

    The Purdue Peace Project (PPP) is a university-based political violence prevention initiative that does peacebuilding work in areas threatened by such violence and conducts research to advance knowledge about political violence prevention at the local, community level. The PPP convenes everyday citizens to help them address immediate threats of violence in their communities. 
    We continually monitor and evaluate our projects to maximize our impact. Then, we share our experience and effective practices with practitioners and scholars around the world.
     

    Cost effective

    Measuring only effectiveness without considering cost can contribute to misallocation of resources. Information on effectiveness without considering cost can lead to misallocation of resources. Cost-effectiveness is what really counts!

    Evidence-based

    Little data is available to help practitioners and funders decide where their effort and money will do the most good. With the level of armed conflict on the rise, and funding under threat, it is increasingly important to have objective evidence

    Local action

    The value of the opinions of local citizens about how
    violence in their communities can be averted is being
    increasingly recognized. Locally led peacebuilding is
    gaining traction.

    About Me 

    • Stacey Connaughton, Ph.D. Director, The Purdue Peace Project

      Milt Lauenstein’s generous and tireless commitment to peacebuilding has had measurable impact on political violence prevention in West Africa and beyond. He is a leader in and advocate for locally led peacebuilding and he has inspired generations of local citizens to help prevent armed conflict. As the benefactor and principal funder for the Purdue Peace Project, Milt has inspired Purdue students, faculty, and myself to help build peace, show evidence-based impact, and contribute to empirical knowledge on locally led peacebuilding.  
    • Charles F. Dambach Former President, Alliance for Peacebuilding

      Milt Lauenstein is a hero and champion in the global peacebuilding community. Working in partnership with the Alliance for Peacebuilding and academic institutions, he has created and helped fund significant and successful model projects in Africa, and he seeks evidence-based strategies for local community-led initiatives that actually reduce violence. Everyone seeking to make a difference for peace benefits from his projects and research.
    • Tom Etzel, Founder, Director, Global PeaceBuilding Foundation

      Milt brings a refreshing business perspective to Peace and Security Philanthropy. His altruism is inspiring.
    • Mari Fitzduff - MA Conflict and Coexistence Programme Founder

      Milt has been a very loyal  questioner of the field since I first met him in 2001. He has put both resources and support into many of the crucial  questions that the peacebuilding field is facing e.g. the overall effectiveness of the work done by the field, , and in particular the effectiveness of local work in preventing outbreaks of violence. His energy and his committed interest  is extraordinary - and his companionship to the field has been exemplary, committing as he has to both resource and emotional support for the  more successful emergence of a field that is effective, and known and utilized to be so. 
    • Jessica Berns - former peacebuilding practitioner and consultant

      Over two decades Milt Lauenstein has focused his philanthropic giving on preventing war and building peace. He has supported research, collaborative action, and on the ground activities. I have always respected his combination of passion and intellectual rigor: has asks difficult questions of the field and of his own giving about in an effort to push for effectiveness and positive change. 
    Learn more
    The site inevitably reflects my own biases based on my years of working to promote peace, but it may be helpful to others engaged in the same task. 

    © Copyright 2019 War and Peacebuilding. | All rights reserved.

    WAR AND PEACEBUILDING FOCUSES ON
    Promoting research that will be useful to peacebuilders' decision-making
     

    Promoting collaboration among peacebuilding organizations to develop common strategies, priorities, plans, and programs

    Promoting locally led peacebuilding
    NAVIGATION