War and the Environment: Jan 17 - Feb 27, 2022

Watch this video about the course:

This course is 100% online and interactions are not live or scheduled, so you can take part whenever works for you. Weekly content includes a mix of text, images, video, and audio. Instructors and students utilize online discussion forums to go over each week's content, as well as to provide feedback on optional assignment submissions.

The course also includes three 1-hour optional zoom calls which are designed to facilitate a more interactive and real-time learning experience.

Week 1: Where Wars Happen and Why, January 17-23

Facilitator: Tim Pluta

Tim describes his path to peace activism as a slow realization that this is a part of what he ought to be doing in life. After standing up to a bully as a young teen, then getting beaten up and asking his attacker if he felt better, having a gun pushed up his nose as an exchange student in a foreign country and talking his way out of the situation, and getting out of the military as a Conscientious Objector, Tim found that the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 finally convinced him that one of his focuses in life would be peace activism. From helping to organize peace rallies, speaking and marching at conferences around the world, co-founding two chapters of Veterans For Peace, the Veterans Global Peace Network, and a World BEYOND War chapter, Tim says that he delights in being invited to help facilitate the first week of World BEYOND War's War and the Environment, and looks forward to learning. Tim represented World BEYOND War in Glasgow Scotland during COP26.

Week 2: What Wars Do to the Earth, January 24-30

Facilitator: Rukmini Iyer

Rukmini Iyer is a seasoned leadership development facilitator, coach and peacebuilder with over 20 years of professional experience around the world. She is currently based in Mumbai, India. After working in mid-management and leadership roles for around 8 years in India and Singapore with renowned organizations, Rukmini set up Exult! Solutions in 2008 with an intention to meld her interests in organization/leadership development and peacebuilding and to create a space for individual and systemic explorations into how we can co-create a world that works for all. The firm is structured as a for-profit venture that consciously redirects a significant part of its earnings and resources to allow for projects in the peacebuilding and social development spaces. Rukmini concurrently works on a range of geo-diverse corporate projects that include organizational development and culture change interventions, competency mapping and assessment centres, leadership and management development journeys, coaching, capacity building, and instructional design.

Week 3: What Imperial Militaries Do to the Earth Back Home, January 31-February 6

Facilitator: Eva Czermak

Eva Czermak, MD, E.MA. is a trained physician, has a Master’s degree in Human Rights and is Rotary Peace Fellow besides being a trained mediator. In the last 20 years she has mainly worked as medical doctor with marginalized groups such as refugees, migrants, homeless people, people with substance abuse problems and without health insurance, 9 of those years as manager of an NGO. Currently she works for the Austrian ombudsman and for Caritas’ aid projects in Burundi. Other experiences include participation in dialogue projects in the US, international experience in the development and humanitarian fields (Burundi and Sudan) and several training activities in the medical, communication and human rights fields.

Week 4: What Nuclear Weapons Have Done and Could Do, February 7-13

Facilitator: Emma Pike

Emma Pike is an energetic individual driven by her firm belief in education as the surest means for building a more peaceful and equitable world for all. Her years of experience in research and academia are supplemented by her more recent experience as a classroom teacher. She has had the privilege of conducting her research in the three unique environments of the United States, Japan, and the United Kingdom. She is especially passionate about the interconnected topics of peace education and global citizenship education. As an educator, she believes that her most important job is to see the vast potential in each of her students, and to guide them in the discovery of this potential. While acquiring the practical literacy, numeracy, and reasoning skills that they will need in life, she wants her students to become active citizens, each in their unique way, who go into the world with the confidence that they have the power to be change-makers. Every child has a super power. As a teacher, it is her job, she says, to believe this and help each student bring their super power to shine. What does it mean to be a global citizen? What does it mean to educate for global citizenship? In our globalized world, in which each of our lives is supported by all others in both seen and unseen ways, these questions represent more than academic curiosity. They are an inquiry into how the largest community that all humans share - the global community - can pave a path of respect for life, celebration of diversity, environmental sustainability, global justice and equity, and harmonious interdependence into the 21st century and beyond.

Week 5: How This Horror Is Hidden and Maintained, February 14-20

Facilitator: Deniz Vural

Deniz Vural is based in Istanbul, Turkey. She is a life-long learner who graduated with a degree in Marine Engineering, focusing on environmental sustainability, followed by a Master's in Geosciences, studying climate change, but also how to transfer this knowledge to a wider public. She has worked since 2015 on various projects and activities on the polar regions, the effects of the climate crisis, and possible steps to be taken to diminish individual footprints (i.e. carbon, water, ecological etc.). Vural has traveled virtually around the Arctic circle to study the deepest unknown, frozen ground, permafrost. She now focuses on permafrost research, particularly investigating thermokarst lakes, which are also known as ice-rich permafrost, and the relationship between waterbody differentiation and changes in the Arctic ecosystems. She is also leading the Education and Outreach leg under the Polar Research Institute at the The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey and is both learning and teaching different disciplines such as ecological gardening and capacity building workshops.

Week 6: What Can Be Done, February 21-27

Facilitators: Greta Zarro and Rachel Small

Greta Zarro is World BEYOND War Organizing Director. She has a background in issue-based community organizing. Her experience includes volunteer recruitment and engagement, event organizing, coalition building, legislative and media outreach, and public speaking. Greta graduated as valedictorian from St. Michael’s College with a bachelor’s degree in Sociology/Anthropology. She previously worked as New York Organizer for leading non-profit Food & Water Watch. There, she campaigned on issues related to fracking, genetically engineered foods, climate change, and the corporate control of our common resources. Greta and her partner run Unadilla Community Farm, a non-profit organic farm and permaculture education center in Upstate New York. Greta can be reached at [email protected].

Rachel Small is World BEYOND WAR Canada Organizer. She is a community organizer based in Toronto, Canada, on Dish with One Spoon and Treaty 13 Indigenous territory. She has organized within local and international social/environmental justice movements for over a decade, with a special focus on working in solidarity with communities harmed by Canadian extractive industry projects in Latin America. She has also worked on campaigns and mobilizations around climate justice, decolonization, anti-racism, disability justice, and food sovereignty. She currently organizes in Toronto with the Mining Injustice Solidarity Network and has a Masters in Environmental Studies from York University. She has a background in art-based activism and has facilitated projects in community mural-making, independent publishing and media, spoken word, guerilla theatre, and communal cooking with people of all ages across Canada. She lives downtown with her partner, kid, and friend, and can often be found at a protest or direct action, gardening, spray painting, and playing softball. Rachel can be reached at [email protected]

LEARN MORE AND RESERVE YOUR SPOT.

Or you can sign up for the following four courses in one discounted package!

War and The Environment, Jan 17 - Feb 27, 2022
War Abolition 101, Apr 18 - May 29, 2022
Leaving WWII Behind, June 19 - July 31, 2022
War Abolition 201, Oct 10 - Nov 20, 2022

LEARN MORE AND SIGN UP FOR FOUR COURSES HERE.

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