MAIN Programs of Wisdom Projects

Our STEM & Healing Arts Peacemaking Afterschool Program joins with the Athletics Program at the McKim Center to form a comprehensive out-of-school-time holistic initiative for the children and youth of our adult community organizers. Our elementary learners (aged 5-9) are called Peace Cubs. Our middle school aged learners (10-13) are called Peace Buds. Running from 3 pm to 6 pm 4-days-a-week, Mondays through Thursdays, this program emphasizes liberation-centered structured learning. The program offers STEM education, visual arts/art therapy, the Planet Protectors Laboratories and peacemaking. We are innovating by integrating science, art education, and language arts with healing and peacemaking. Select Fridays are reserved for field trips. This program also features our Healthy Foodways Initiative, serving one high-protein, homemade low-sodium, low-sugar meal with fresh veggies, fruit, and filtered water to combat food insecurity. 

The  Youth Peacemakers Program is an intensive workforce development program focusing on learning skills for violence prevention, job-readiness, and pre-college/trade school-readiness for adolescents and young adults aged 14-24. Youth in this program implement peacemaking broadly and deeply into their lives and the lives of our community members. The program is designed for youth to learn and practice the highest professional workforce values and practices that prepare them to work and live well away from the challenges within which they grew up in the housing projects. We wish for them to broaden their horizons and be prepared to face a competitive world of work outside of their neighborhood. We also prepare them with best practices for their conduct in college or trade school. Most enrollees in this program work within our STEM & Healing Arts Peacemaking Afterschool Program at the McKim Center. Their work in the afterschool program involves assisting with mentoring younger children in peaceful behavior, setting-up, cleaning-up, and supporting meal preparation and meal service. Others are administrative aides or they assist with strategic communications, nonviolence video/photo/PSA campaigns and posting to Wisdom Projects' social media accounts. Youth 14-17 are paid $15 an hour (signing contracts with their parent or legal guardian). Young adults aged 18-24 are paid $18-$20 per hour. All are given wrap-around services. They learn de-escalation through mindfulness, conflict resolution, trauma-informed care, restorative justice, and Social and Emotional Learning. They learn to carefully follow our Policies. They also engage in regular healing circles like mediations and Amnesty Days. They learn the value of liberation-centered responsible employment as they become ambassadors for peacemaking. We serve one healthy homemade meal daily in our afterschool program for enrolled parents,  children, youth, and families.Our Youth Peacemakers program is gender-inclusive, enrolling girls, boys, nonbinary individuals, and young adults of diverse life experiences. From 2019-2025, our subgroup of LGBTQ+ Youth Peacemakers called themselves StarBrights.

Our Parent Peacemakers are the parents/legal guardians of our enrolled children, youth, and young adults. Whole families must join together to cultivate peace. Some of our Parent Peacemakers work in our STEM & Healing Arts Peacemaking Afterschool Program at the McKim Center. Others assist with social media engagement and administrative tasks. For their work they are paid a minimum of $20 an hour. All are given wrap-around services. They become trained Community Health Workers while receiving peer support. Some spread nonviolent messaging in videos, photos, within their homes, within the schools of their children, within their neighborhoods, on the streets, on social media, and by word-of-mouth in peacemaking campaigns. Enrollees attend healing circles emphasizing peer support and receive training in de-escalation, mindfulness, conflict resolution, trauma-informed care, restorative justice, and Social and Emotional Learning. We serve one healthy homemade meal daily in our afterschool program for enrolled parents,  children, youth, and families.

Each summer, in partnership with the McKim Center, the Wisdom Projects holds a 5-week summer day camp for the Peace Cubs and Peace Buds (youth aged 5 through 14) in July from 10 am to 3 pm, five days a week (Mondays through Fridays) featuring STEM lessons, athletics, and intensive training in peace education and community organizing through conflict resolution, de-escalation through mindfulness, restorative justice, and Social and Emotional Learning.

The Planet Protectors Laboratory for youth aged 5-18 focuses on peacemaking for environmental justice and cultural literacy through hands-on experimentation. Click here for an overview of this program.

Conflict resolution through restorative justice is the programmatic glue that makes all of our programs impactful and effective, including the following projects on a weekly basis: 

• Mediations within healing circles.
• Amnesty Day Thursdays, a regular healing circle focusing on apology, making amends, forgiveness, and affirmation, emphasizing a core principle that there can be no true forgiveness and apology without accountability, amends, reparation and/or restitution.  
• Amnesty Day Truth and Reconciliations: Extended (sometimes weeks or months-long mediations) on select days-of-the-week involving groups of community members or families enduring seemingly intractable, long-term disputes.