Julie Titone

Young people around the globe may soon be attending courses that are tailor-made for their communities, designed to enhance understanding among people of different faiths. This is possible because of an unusual collaboration between experts in peace studies and the business world — one that began when Patrice Brodeur took a stroll across Notre Dame’s South Quad.

Brodeur, a native of Canada who holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University, specializes in Islamic and religious studies. He arrived at the Kroc Institute in fall 2004 as a Rockefeller visiting fellow. He planned to spend the next nine months studying the relationship between the growing inter-religious movement and peacebuilding efforts.

Brodeur also was designing a curriculum aimed at teaching young people how to communicate, and build peace with, those of different faiths. He had not settled on the best way to adapt lessons to local situations, given that different communities have varied religious mixes and sources of tension. Nor had he found a good way to share his research with scholars and teachers around the world.

As he considered various options, Brodeur hit upon the idea of a web portal. It would integrate his history of modern inter-religious movement with a system that would deliver curricula worldwide. However, he lacked the technical skill to build such a site.

That’s where his exploratory September walk across the quad came in. It led him to the Gigot Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the Mendoza College of Business. The center was advertising its Social Venture Plan Competition, which could foster creation of Brodeur’s social-educational venture: an organization and web site called Youth Peace in Education (YPE). He put together a development team, and entered the competition.

The team was comprised of eight people, including Jonathan Smith, a Kroc Institute graduate student. Smith said he benefited greatly from the experience. He especially appreciated the opportunity to discuss peace studies with Brodeur, “someone who is closer to being a peer than my professors, while further ahead of me in knowledge and experience.”

Other student participants were Matthew Warren, George Dzuricsko, and Leah McKelvey, all of Notre Dame; and Sarah Bier of the University of Illinois. Rounding out the team were Shaheen Sidi and Amin Tejpar, young Canadians who own an information and data-management company called Cyberswirl.

Their combined expertise included religious studies, curriculum development, youth work, peacebuilding, business management and information technology. There were two Jews (Orthodox and Reform), three Christians (Anglican, Evangelical and Roman Catholic), two Muslims and one agnostic.

The team’s business plan optimistically budgeted the first-place award of $3,000 for fees needed to establish the not-for-profit organization. Their prototype web site reflected the four objectives of YPE:

• To collect existing curricula about religious “others,” inter-religious dialogue and peacebuilding, and make them accessible to students, teachers and curriculum developers worldwide;

• To develop an e-learning global certificate program that will teach young people and adults, especially in conflict areas;

• To map the history of the modern inter-religious movement;

• To develop a network of people and organizations who will both share, and use, information on the site.

Twenty-eight business plans were entered in the Social Venture Plan competition. The YPE proposal was one of six to survive the first round. At that point, the teams were assigned outside mentors and one Mendoza team champion to help them fine-tune their proposals. The team champion for YPE was Rachel Farrell George, program manager at the Gigot Center.

“Social entrepreneurs act as change agents for society, seizing opportunities others miss and improving systems to create sustainable solutions for the common good,” George said. “They tend to be innovative and open to new ideas, making the most of the limited resources available to them. Patrice and the rest of the YPE Team showed through great flexibility, teamwork, and persistence what can be achieved when multiple disciplines and expertise come together to serve a common vision.”

On April 29, competition finalists presented their plans to a large audience in the business school auditorium. Late that Friday, YPE team members learned that they had been awarded the $3,000 prize. April turned out to be an exemplary month, because the project also received a $28,900 start-up grant from the United States Institute of Peace.

“Our aim is to launch the YPE portal officially in September, with basic curriculum services as well as an experimental on-line course on inter-religious dialogue and peacebuilding for beginners,” said Brodeur.

The YPE web address will be www.cyberswirl.com/clients/YPE.

Seven of the eight team members remain involved in the project. Matthew Warren, who is just completing his master’s degree in non-profit management, will be its full-time executive director. It will be based at the University of Montreal, where Brodeur has taken his new post as Canada Research Chair on Islam, Pluralism and Globalization.

Brodeur’s use of his Rockefeller fellowship was uncommon in that it went well beyond research, and directly involved students and faculty elsewhere at Notre Dame. But, as he noted, the YPE project was in keeping with the institute’s emphasis on both the scholarship and practice of peacebuilding.

“I am profoundly grateful to the whole Kroc Institute family for creating the unique space where our founding team could envision YPE and implement its first phase,” he said. “I’m equally grateful to the Gigot Center for creating a mentoring competition. Without that, we would not have learned so much about social entrepreneurship, which so ideally serves the vision and mission of Youth in Peace Education.”

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