Skip to main content

Peace and Reconciliation Centre

UFV/Peace and Reconciliation Centre/About PARC

About PARC

Our vision

To be a safe, supportive and peaceful place to promote dialogue, research, scholarly, and artistic work for faculty, students, and community to approach differences, conflicts, activism, and the challenges of life in a way that works for the good of the individual, the community, and the world we live in.

Our mission

Envision and facilitate constructive and innovative processes that promote healthy relationships, transform conflict, and build just communities.

PARC foundational principles

1. Attitudes and cultures

  • The Centre’s work fosters service where there is apathy, respect where there is discrimination, responsibility where there is blame, integrity where there is dishonesty, empathy where there is hubris, restoration where there is punishment, and courage where there is timidity.

2. Listening and dialogue

  • Create, facilitate, support and structure places and opportunities to hear people’s stories.
  • Listen to understand, hear and acknowledge the emotions and affects related to conflict.
  • Facilitate dialogue of what the story means to all of us in the past, present and future.
  • Use constructive ways to build peace.

3. Transformation

  • Cooperatively work out a way to act justly to deal with the past and create positive, healthy ways to move forward together.
  • Actively promote and support restorative models and methods of justices and reconciliation.
  • Equip citizens of all ages with a restorative frame of reference and the skills to use conflict to transform our culture to healthier relationships.

4. Restoration and new beginnings

  • Strengthen our culture and community through education, mediation, relationship building and advocacy to change and transform systems, policies and laws.