When a parent (or a person with parental responsibilities) is arrested, sentenced, or imprisoned, it can have a profound and lasting impact on their children. A standard measure of childhood trauma that psychologists use is called the Adverse Childhood Experiences score. One of the ten questions used to calculate this score is, “Did a household…
Editor’s note: Over a year ago CFSC reached out to several of our long-term Indigenous partners, asking them for guidance and support as we considered the rightness of operating a Reconciliation Fund. We set up a working group with some of these Indigenous partners, who agreed to review applications to the Fund. Based on…
A few years ago, I attended a talk by Mohawk Elder Rarihokwats in Ottawa and received a mighty teaching when he asked us (the non-Indigenous folks attending), “Why are you still settlers?” His question challenged my settler/ally identity, which felt destabilizing and made me angry. Reflecting on this question and my anger in the years…
I flew into Kinshasa with Leon, a Congolese trainer in the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP). While waiting for two hours for my luggage, I was thrilled to have a young man ask if I was Bertha. It was Johnny, from Kinshasa Monthly Meeting’s Project Muinda, which CFSC has supported for two decades. We finally…
Each year in St. Catherines, Ontario, the Haudenosaunee hold a whitetail deer hunt in Short Hills Provincial Park. The right to hunt there is guaranteed under treaty, but each year the entrance to the park is cut off by a group of protesters. On November 17th, CFSC Program Assistant Keira Mann spoke on a…
Video explains how a Department of Peace could make a difference CFSC program assistant Keira Mann narrates a five minute video The Story of the Rohingya: Imagine Another Way. It considers what a Department of Peace might do to coordinate efforts to prevent and respond to atrocities. 2018 report on Friends and reconciliation In…