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 5-10) are called Peace Cubs. Our middle school aged learners (11-14) 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 violence prevention, job-readiness, and pre-college/trade school workforce development program for adolescent and young adult community organizers aged 14-18 and 19-24. Youth in this program implement peacemaking broadly and deeply into their lives and the lives of our community members. Most enrollees in this program work (for $15 per hour) within our STEM & Healing Arts Peacemaking Afterschool Program at the McKim Center while receiving immersive job-readiness training, peacemaking training, and engaging in peer support groups. They learn de-escalation through mindfulness, conflict resolution, trauma-informed care, restorative justice, and Social and Emotional Learning. Their work in the afterschool program involves assisting with mentoring younger children, setting-up, cleaning-up, and supporting meal preparation and meal service. 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. Our Youth Peacemakers program is gender-inclusive, enrolling girls, boys, nonbinary individuals, and young adults of diverse life experiences. Presently, our subgroup of LGBTQ+ Youth Peacemakers call themselves StarBrights and our subgroup of young adult male Peacemakers call themselves The Peacelocks.

The Parent Peacemakers Program is an intensive violence prevention collective of trained Community Health Workers and community organizers who are present or past parents, grandparents, or legal guardians of youth enrolled in our programming. With ongoing training and peer support, the parents build campaigns to cultivate peace broadly and deeply in their lives. They spread nonviolent messaging within their homes, within the schools of their children, within their neighborhoods, on the streets, on social media and by word-of-mouth. Enrollees attend regular healing circles emphasizing peer support and receive training in de-escalation, mindfulness, conflict resolution, trauma-informed care, restorative justice, and Social and Emotional Learning. The parents receive stipends for community organizing for peace. They also receive healthy food support, and limited wrap-around services like funds for transportation, phone support, and help with funding medical emergencies not covered by health insurance. They also receive many referrals to agencies that help them with life's challenges. They co-lead regular mediations and Amnesty Days. Several work part-time within Wisdom Projects to help govern our other programs. One Parent Peacemaker, Sharon Williams, sits on the Board of Directors and is a Senior Program Specialist. The Parent Peacemakers partner with Wisdom Projects to guide its mission and work. Click here to become a recurring monthly supporter on Patreon and unlock further information about our specific programming for parents of different genders and groups to end domestic and intimate partner violence. We have general monthly peer support groups as well as support groups for neurodivergent and/or autistic individuals. We also have peer support groups for parents with severe mental health conditions.

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 Laboratories focus on environmental justice and life science and include hands-on projects that uplift trauma-informed peace and wellness. Most are subprograms that occur within the STEM & Healing Arts Peacemaking Program.

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

B. The Comma Trauma Laboratory for youth and parents involves hands-on knowledge gathering and practice about pausing the effects and symptoms of trauma through a scientific understanding of the body and mind's anatomical and sensory functions and experiences. 

C. Mathletics. Youth practice data-driven math problems that broaden and deepen and understanding of the statistical realities of environmental justice and peacemaking.

D. The Poetry for Peace Project middle schoolers involves reading, writing, and analyzing poems and related traditions about peace and environmental justice to integrate wellness, literacy, creativity, and criticism within our out-of-school-time and summer programs.

E. The Parents For Peace Book Club in which parents in Wisdom Projects' programming gather to read and discuss books and articles that delve into issues of environmental justice, peace, nonviolence, and justice.

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.