Calling all change agents who are READY to explore profound inner peace and learn the leading-edge practices to truly create peace in our families, communities and our world:

You now have the rare opportunity to access the world’s leading peacebuilders and their step-by-step approaches to navigating conflict and building peace, so you can heal yourself, your family and the world, NOW, when the world needs us most.

We are clearly in a time of the most accelerated changes in history. The skills of defusing and transforming conflict and healing social wounds are at the core of whether we can create a healthy, vibrant, peaceful and sustainable world.

You CAN make a profound difference and truly be part of the change our planet needs - and you can learn to do so effectively with tools and strategies from world-renowned social healer James O’Dea and more than a dozen of the world’s most respected peacebuilders.

We’ll show you how with this 16-week advanced course designed to take you along the peace continuum, from inner peace to international peace. First, we’ll take you into the heart of peace on an inner dimension - both from a scientific and spiritual perspective - and then across the continuum to the practical approaches of transforming conflict on the interpersonal, community, national and international levels.

Led by James O’Dea, the former President of the Institute of Noetic Sciences and the former Director of Amnesty International in Washington, DC, you’ll learn from someone who combines a deep understanding of the emerging “science of peace” with a depth and breadth of practical field experience in addressing human suffering of all kinds.

The transformation that comes from peacebuilding can also liberate your heart, mind and soul from negative patterns, resistance and fear, allowing you to become a more radiant and effective light in the world.

Therefore, it’s a journey into your deepest self, helping you to heal old wounds, remove barriers to intimacy and trust, cultivate powerful friendships in the world and find your own unique contribution to global transformation.

Join us now for the Peace Ambassador Training by registering here

• You long to be a true peacebuilder during this pivotal time in history - but know you could be more effective if you had the right skills, practices and community of support.
• You want to help heal personal and collective wounds - and are open to learning how to do it.
• You strive to communicate in a healthy way that brings people, families and organizations together to work and collaborate more effectively.
• You hunger for a comprehensive peacebuilding map that gives you the essential skillset of a social healer.
• You want to develop techniques for cultivating inner peace and spaciousness, lowering the walls in your own heart, so you can come to forgiveness and healing around past wounds and teach others to do the same.
• You see that there is something quite beautiful underway in the world - and you want to learn from the most inspiring programs and people about how to play your highest role.
• You understand that a committed process of practice and learning over four months is the best way for you to evolve your skills and take yourself to the next level.

Peace Ambassador classes are conducted via conference calls on Wednesday nights at 5:00pm Pacific. The 90-minute classes are followed by optional 30-minute small group discussions where students engage one another to deepen their understanding of course content.

In addition, participants stay connected with James O’Dea, Shift Network staff and other participants throughout the course via a private online community forum, which offers a rich and safe environment for students to explore how to integrate the course content into their daily lives and their own peacebuilding endeavors.

The Peace Ambassador Training is also The Shift Network’s certification process for leaders in the Summer of Peace 2012, a global network of events and activities promoting the shift to a culture of peace. During the training, you will develop and hone a vision for how you can play a peacebuilding leadership role in this significant global event. We’ll also offer many ways for you to apply your skills through our broader network.

Through this four-month journey, you will:

• Develop profound skills and tools for cultivating peace in your life, your family, and your community, providing the training you need to be a more effective peacebuilder in the world.
• Learn how to navigate conflict and stand in the fire of hostility and aggression in powerfully effective ways, giving you the tools to be a social healer.
• Be empowered to release old wounds, navigate stress and clear barriers to friendships, as well as understand how to accelerate that process in others.
• Learn exactly how to practice and model the principles of peaceful communication that alleviate aggression and antagonism and gain confidence to facilitate others in creating a culture of peace during this momentous period of planetary change.
• Gain a comprehensive overview of leading practices along the peace continuum, from inner to international peacebuilding, including the leading-edge science of peace.
• Develop a strong foundation in community-building and organizing skills.
• Be inspired and guided to manifest your greatest qualities in service to humanity’s emergence and your deepest identity as a Peace Ambassador.
• Connect with an inspiring network of peacebuilders, friends and allies from around the world, including direct exposure to the planet’s leading peacebuilders.
• Have the opportunity to play a significant role in a massive Summer of Peace 2012 series of world-changing events.

Dear friend in peacemaking,

I have lived both on the frontlines of brutal inhumanity and the leading edge of conscious evolution. I’ve seen firsthand the horrors of genocide and was even in one tense situation where I received multiple stab wounds.

I’ve also seen the flowering of deep love and respect between people with long histories of animosity towards each other.

After decades of work, I can assure you that the world is now ready, in a way that it has never been, to make a profound shift - to shed its addiction to violence, to cleanse its old wounds and open to a global healing the likes of which we have barely imagined.

I invite you to be part of this great work, this birthing of a new and more harmonious era of human existence.

It begins in the deep recesses of your heart. It grows in the love you weave in your family. It buds in the healing of old grudges in your community. And it blossoms in the ending of war.

The walls can come down between us such that we experience the magnificence of the design that connects us. We can learn to think peace, be peace and celebrate peace, leading to a harvest of love, joy, connection and intimacy that comes from no longer warring with each other or ourselves.

I want to share with you all that I’ve been given in decades of traveling the world, working with some of the most remarkable men, women and children who are lighting the way forward. There is a beautiful new synthesis emerging - from the high mountain Kogis of Colombia to spiral dynamics in the West Bank, from the devotional heart of India to the rigorous mind of Western science.

This synthesis offers a clear, sober and inspiring picture of what we must do to shift beyond violence as an acceptable response to conflict and to transform the roots of that dis-ease at all levels of our world.

For our Peace Ambassador Training, we have brought together the leading pioneers of that synthesis for a state-of-the-art certification program.

All around us are the festering wounds of conflict, misunderstanding, violence and fear. We have the opportunity to be healers, bridgebuilders and peacemakers, bringing great benefit not only to the world, but to you, personally.

I invite you to be one of the pioneers of this path, together with hundreds from around the world who hear the call to become Ambassadors for a new and joyous era in human evolution.

We will laugh together, heal together, vision together, awaken together and learn from inspired masters of peace. We will create a new template for what is possible, with profound impacts in every area of your life and our world.

Remember, peacemaking is not just the domain of international heroes. It’s one of the most practical skills for transforming the quality of our lives, our families and our society. It’s the foundation for turning conflict into friendship, stress into creativity and discord into collaboration. There are few skills that can more dramatically improve the quality of your relationships. And our world.

And the peacemaker does not just touch others - we touch our own innermost Self through the raw, naked power of the human heart. We shed layers of illusion and defense to live in a way that is lit by a powerful love.

If you hear the call, do join us. The world is calling forth our best NOW to help in the great turning of our day. It is time for each of us to play our unique, sacred role.

Are you ready to learn how to transform tension into peace, discord into love, violence into understanding?

I hope so. We were truly born for this day.

In peace,
James O’Dea

James O’Dea is a well-known figure in international social healing who has conducted healing and reconciliation dialogues for 15 years. He is currently the co-director of The Social Healing Project, whose work has led him to Rwanda, Israel/Palestine and Northern Ireland. In addition to teaching the Path of the Peacemaker and Peace Ambassador Training programs at The Shift Network, he is also on the extended faculty of the Institute of Noetic Sciences and is its immediate past president.

The former Washington office director of Amnesty International and CEO of the Seva Foundation, O’Dea is a member of The Evolutionary Leaders Group founded by Deepak Chopra. His most recent book, Creative Stress: A Path for Evolving Souls Living through Personal and Planetary Upheaval (2010), was featured and reviewed in dozens of media outlets.

James is committed to dialogue as a practice and is engaged in dialogues at SEED Graduate Institute between native elders, physicists, and thought leaders; between Israeli and Palestinian psychologists and social workers; and contributes to dialogue on systems thinking and government policy making with the Washington, D.C.-based Global Systems Initiatives.

In August 2010, O’Dea was recognized with the honor of “Champion of Peace, Reconciliation and Forgiveness” by the Worldwide Forgiveness Alliance. James lectures and gives workshops all over the world and was a keynote speaker at the Berlin Peace Festival in August 2011. He is also an advisory board member of the Peace Alliance and is working on a book called Cultivating Peace, to be published in 2012.

Q: What is a virtual course?
A: It’s a great way to engage live teachings and each other from the comfort of your home! All you need is a phone line (or an equivalent voice service). If there is more than one person in your household taking the course, you will each need your own line. We use MaestroConference to make it just like an in-person event, where you can ask questions, participate in groups, and deepen your exploration of the course themes.

Please note that dialing MaestroConference from your phone is a regular toll call to California, and your telephone service provider will charge you according to your existing long-distance calling plan. You can also use Skype credit/subscription (www.skype.com) or Google Voice (google.com/voice) to dial in to MaestroConference, and you’ll need to use your virtual keypad to enter your PIN and to indicate that you want to ask a question. Other options include calling cards and discount long-distance carriers, and we also have a webcast which is free to use from anywhere in the world.

Q: Can I get benefit from the course if I miss the live classes?
A: Absolutely! You can download the recordings and transcripts of all course sessions from our online media archive, so you never need to worry about missing live calls. You can also engage the full community and leaders on our private community website.

Q: Are there scholarships available for this Training?
A: Yes, we always make a certain percentage of spaces available for partial scholarships, giving preference to those in developing countries or doing important but underpaid work to which they can apply the training material immediately. If you would like to apply for a scholarship, please review our guidelines, which include a link to our online application form.

Q: What is your refund policy?
A: Your satisfaction with The Shift Network and this course is our highest priority! If you find that the course is not meeting your needs, please submit a request to our Customer Service Center so that we can address your concerns. We offer a satisfaction guarantee for a full 2 weeks so that you can try out the course risk-free. The deadline to receive a full refund is before the start of the 3rd class on March 21st. Click here to submit a refund request with the subject line "Refund request."

Q: How can I reach Customer Support?
A: Please visit our Customer Support Center, where you should be able to find the answer to your question or the solution to a problem. And if you can’t, you can submit an online request form and we’ll get right back to you.

Q: What are the benefits of telling my friends to join the program?
A: You can sign up as an Affiliate of The Shift Network and receive 20% for anyone that you introduce who registers for the virtual event. If you bring five friends into the event, you can cover your own! Register at theshiftnetwork.com/affiliate and you’ll receive a promotional link to use.