ABOUT US

The Institute of Peace and Understanding is a leading Ukrainian public organization that specializes in achieving positive and sustainable changes through dialogue and restorative practices. UCP was created in 2001 in Kyiv as a subsidiary of the American NGO "Search for Common Ground", and in 2012 it was reorganized into the Institute for Peace and Understanding.

Our mission: "We help to understand each other in situations of conflict and joint decision-making."

IMiP has 25 years of experience in this field. Our activity is based on a restorative approach aimed at solving conflicts and correcting their consequences. It involves building trust and involving the participants involved in the situation in the process of discussion, decision-making or conflict resolution in order to build understanding, reach consensus regarding decision-making, conflict resolution and/or the creation of a non-violent environment.

The focus of the organization is on three main areas:

1. Restorative justice - creating an affordable and effective alternative to criminal justice through the implementation of restorative justice programs in Ukraine
2. Restorative practices in communities - building a safe environment by increasing the potential of territorial communities in a restorative approach
3. Restorative practices in schools - building a safe and peaceful school environment for sustainable positive changes in the community and society

During our work in the field of restorative practices in schools, we established the permanent work of about 30 School Mediation Services (SMS) in different regions of Ukraine, taught more than 5,000 schoolchildren and teachers to resolve conflicts through mediation, wrote methodological recommendations and recommended standards for the quality of operation of the SMS, drew up the algorithm for creating the ShSP, translated books by foreign authors that increased the productivity of the ShSP.

The result of many years of work of IMiP was the creation of a unique model "Peaceful School" - an integrated and complex model of building relationships and communication in an educational institution, the purpose of which is to create a safe and peaceful environment in the school community by preventing violence and bullying and reducing the level of conflict. The model has the status of an educational experiment at the all-Ukrainian level, in accordance with the order of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine dated November 1, 2019[3] and is being implemented in 10 pilot schools in 5 regions of Ukraine together with the Ukrainian National Center for Practical Psychology and Social Work and the Institute for Modernization of Education Content of the Ministry of Education and Culture.

Read more about the work of IMiP and the creation of the Peace School in the article "From Peer-to-Peer Mediation to the "Peace School"

Sincerely,
the team of the Institute of Peace and Understanding