Mennonite International Peacebuilding and Local Ownership

This chapter aims to close the gap between the good intentions of international organizations and the actual on-the-ground peacebuilding practice that has, thus far, struggled to grant local individuals and groups control over project design and project implementation. To this end, the proceeding discussion highlights the small-scale, but well-recognized, peacebuilding work of a group of North American Mennonite organizations and individuals that has quietly been wrestling with the idea of increased local ownership for over fifty years. Thus, this chapter holds up select practices that have incubated inside of Mennonite peacebuilding initiatives around the globe as both examples worth emulating and as evidence of the benefits to increased local ownership of peacebuilding work.