CollaborationNet

Peace-First Library · Background Paper

Healing Harm and Building Positive Peace

Reimagining the role of Palaver Hut as a Peace-First organization — reflections from a structured community engagement.

Prepared by the Palaver Hut Team · April 2026 · Funded by CMCCF
 

Please Note

This paper was commissioned by the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and Community Capacity Foundation (CMCCF) and prepared by Palaver Hut, one of our valued partners. Palaver Hut is a community-based organization within Manitoba’s Sierra Leonean community dedicated to advancing social and restorative justice.

CMCCF invited Palaver Hut to engage members of their community in exploring how the Peace-First framework might complement and strengthen their existing model.

This document is a thinking paper, offered as a resource to stimulate dialogue, reflection, and future development. To connect with Palaver Hut directly: palaverhutproject@gmail.com

Peace building is a continuum… a process, like reconciliation.

— Victor Kaicombey, Founder, Palaver Hut
 

THE FRAMEWORK

Peace lives in three domains

Individual

Safety, calm, belonging, freedom from fear — peace as something felt, not abstract.

Family

Communication, respect, shared responsibility — homes where everyone feels secure.

Community

Fairness, trust, strong leadership — spaces that catch tension before it divides.

WHAT WE HEARD

Peace and its threats

What builds peace
Safety and emotional balance
Belonging and connection
Stable work and basic needs met
Faith, love, purpose
What threatens it
Racism and exclusion
Unemployment and unaffordability
Loneliness and poor communication
Intergenerational misunderstanding
"Without Palaver Hut's intervention, the community would have been divided."
— Community stakeholder, on a leadership conflict Palaver Hut helped resolve
WHAT PALAVER HUT HAS BUILT

Trust that took years to earn

Confidentiality, mediation, dialogue, unity — assets that can’t be built overnight. Palaver Hut’s cultural grounding makes it a form of community-based leadership that reaches where formal systems can’t.

 
FROM HEALING HARM TO BUILDING PEACE

Prevention, not a departure

Restorative justice repairs harm after it happens. Peace-First builds the conditions — trust, communication, wellbeing — that stop it happening in the first place. Same roots, wider reach.

LOOKING AHEAD

Where this could go next

Individual

Mentorship and dialogue spaces addressing stress, identity, and belonging.

Family

Parent-youth dialogue circles and culturally responsive parenting sessions.

Community

Forums, workshops, and outreach that build trust and cohesion — with Palaver Hut as a visible, open resource.

USE THIS PAPER TO

Put it to work

1

Guide strategic planning

2

Shape program design

3

Support partnerships

4

Strengthen funding proposals

Diverse Voices

PEACEBUILDING

Moving from healing harm to building peace isn’t a break from Palaver Hut’s roots — it’s a continuation of them.

Connect

A Message to Our Community

After years of dedicated leadership, our Director Martin will be stepping down as CMCCF enters an exciting new chapter. We are deeply grateful for everything he has brought to the Coalition of Manitoba Cultural Communities for Families, and we look forward to what lies ahead together.

As we navigate this transition, we welcome your questions, thoughts, and support. For any inquiries, please reach out to Florence at floxy166@yahoo.ca — she will be happy to hear from you.

Thank you for being part of our community.

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Purpose

The Purpose of These Peace-First: CollaborationNet Pages These pages exist to share what we have learned. Over the past year, Peace-First: CollaborationNet has operated as a time-limited demonstration initiative, which is a space to test ideas, host conversations, and discover what might grow when peace is placed at the center. Conversations took root in informal Peace-First Hubs across Winnipeg, Thompson, Brandon, and Portage la Prairie, with related gatherings in Vancouver and Toronto. Toronto now helps convene national roundtable conversations, linking local dialogue with a broader Canadian exchange. What began as small, local discussions has become more connected — not through expansion or centralization, but through coherence. Across regions, shared themes, tensions, and hopes are emerging. This webpage documents that journey. It gathers reflections, materials, and learning from Hub conversations so others can understand what has been explored and carry it forward. From the beginning, Peace-First was designed as a seed-planting initiative, formally concluding March 31, 2026. Its focus has been to explore how individuals and cultural communities understand inner peace, collective vision, community cohesion, and cultural dignity and visibility. The Hubs are volunteer-led spaces where community connectors and members gather to listen, reflect, and imagine what a peaceful geographic and cultural community might look like in practice. Along the way, we developed background papers, reflection documents, and practical toolkits shaped by lived experience in Manitoba and beyond. This page now serves as a living repository within the Peace-First Library, offering capacity-building tools, framing papers, hub guidance, and shared learning that communities can adapt to their own realities. The purpose is not to centralize authority, but to make learning accessible. Peace-First Hubs are community-led and partner-supported — grounded in relationship, not hierarchy. Supported by ACOMI, ECCM, Palaver Hut, MIA, cultural community members across the country, and allies such as MANSO, Mediation Services, CanU Canada, and PCHS, this work moves through partnership rather than control. This initiative has been made possible through the principal financial support of the Department of Canadian Heritage, with a supportive role played by The Winnipeg Foundation. Their investment has allowed these conversations, materials, and connections to take shape. These materials are not instructions to replicate. They are tools to adapt. This page is more than documentation. It is an invitation. Peace-First is not about imposing a uniform model. It is about strengthening conditions for dialogue, cohesion, and shared responsibility before a crisis. If this resonates, we invite you to explore further, join a national roundtable call, or consider what it would mean to host or support a conversation in your own community. Join a national roundtable call. Complete the survey. The seeds have been planted. What grows next depends on all of us.

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