Planting BePeace; The Profound Made Practical - 11 Days of Global Unity

By Rita Marie Johnson

The question of how to “plant peace” has been the driving force in my life since I was a farm girl growing up in Missouri.

As an adult, I learned that Costa Rica identified with peace and I moved there to learn from their success. By 2002, I created a synergistic skill set for building social and emotional intelligence for peace. I named it “BePeace” and began integrating it into my daily life. Although it required practice, I was encouraged as I made progress in embodying peace, all because I had a clear “how to” that worked reliably and efficiently.

I initiated the Rasur Foundation to achieve my vision: a world where every person practices peace and passes this gift on to the next generation. The foundation is named after a Costa Rican poem, Rasur, which tells of a mysterious teacher who teaches the children of a small village how to find peace in their hearts. As the children share with their parents what they’ve learned, they all discover a more creative way of life and their community thrives in peace.

Rasur points to the wisdom of our hearts and compassion for one another as the keys to a culture of peace. In our time, we name these keys “social and emotional intelligence” but their impact is the same. Without social and emotional skills, peace is an impossible dream. With them, peace becomes an achievable way of life. In creating BePeace, I zeroed in on those skills that make the profound nature of peace practical in every moment.

In 2004, the Rasur Foundation began offering BePeace in Costa Rican schools and trained over 600 teachers in a 40 hour course. As a result, almost 18,000 students have been positively impacted. Annual evaluations revealed that bullying, intolerance, conflicts and violence had diminished. Misconduct reports decreased as well. Further training was provided to select teachers, known as “Rasurs,” so they could teach BePeace in their schools.

In 2005, BePeace won the Ashoka Changemakers Innovaton Award: Building a More Ethical Society, chosen from 79 projects in 32 countries. To strengthen support for peace education, the Rasur Foundation initiated a bill in 2006 to establish a University for Peace in Costa Rica, a graduate school for international leaders.

Having planted many seeds in Costa Rica over 18 years, I felt called to return to my own country. In 2010, I began training US Rasurs, who now offer courses to schools and the public. By May 2012, the first US BePeace pilot at Oakley Elementary in Houston was deemed a success. Now a BePeace Classroom Kit, along with in-service training, gives educators what they need to follow suit. Just like Rasur, these teachers are planting peace in the hearts of children and the ultimate harvest will be a creative way of life that works for everyone.

Rita Marie Johnson is an international peacemaker and founder of Rasur Foundation International which has trained citizens in the United States, Costa Rica and several other countries to teach the BePeace practice she created. A BePeace course will be offered by Rita Marie Johnson to the Ames community in 2013. For further information on her work seewww.rasurinternational.org or call 817-653-7836