Roundtable Breakfast - Building Rapport, Building Peace

Monthly

NYC-DR Roundtable Breakfast

PLEASE NOTE: DUE TO LABOR DAY HOLIDAY, 

THIS ROUNDTABLE BREAKFAST IS SCHEDULED FOR 

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10TH

BUILDING RAPPORT, BUILDING PEACE

Stories from a Peacebuilder

ALDO CIVICO

In this talk, anthropologist and conflict resolution specialist ALDO CIVICO shares experiences and lessons learned from his peacebuilding work in Colombia while meeting with communities affected by violence, members of guerrillas, death squads, drug lords and gang members. He shares how building rapport with victims and victimizers led to the creation of spaces where ideas, intuitions and transformation were allowed to emerge.

ALDO CIVICO, an author and anthropologist, has been working in peace building for the past 25 years. He was a member of the anti-mafia social-movement in Sicily, where he worked as a senior adviser to the mayor of Palermo Leoluca Orlando. For the past 15 years, he has been working in Colombia doing ethnography on the armed conflict as well as collaborating in peace efforts. Between 2005 and 2008, he facilitated ceasefire negotiations between the government of Colombia and a major guerrilla group. He has been advising a variety of international and government agencies, businesses and organizations, including celebrities, such as artists Juanes, Forest Whitaker and the soccer star James Rodriguez (Real Madrid). He is a board member of Peace is Loud, an organization founded by filmmaker and philanthropist Abigail Disney. He is an assistant professor of anthropology at Rutgers University in Newark and a lecturer in conflict resolution at Columbia University. Aldo is a regular columnist for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and a blogger for Psychology Today. His book The Para-State: an Ethnography of Colombia’s Death Squads (University of California Press) will be published in November 2015.