Summer Peace Lab

Summer Peace Lab is a week-long, live-in experience in Central Mississippi, Sunday night through Saturday morning. It is  built for rising high school juniors and seniors who are trying to make sense of current chaos and opposing messages.

Half the group is from Mississippi. The other half is from outside the South. On purpose. We’re bringing together people across geography, race, class, and identity because peacemaking doesn’t work in a bubble. It works when different people are in the room together, figuring it out.

This isn’t sitting in a circle talking about your feelings. This is active peacemaking, learning how to use your voice, your relationships, and your power to change what’s unjust. Because staying quiet isn’t peace. It’s just letting the loudest person win.

Learn the ideas behind nonviolent resistance, then see where it actually happened. Mississippi is ground zero for the Civil Rights movement, and you’ll go to the places where history turned, where Emmett Till was murdered, where churches were bombed, where three civil rights workers were buried near Philadelphia, MS. You’ll walk through downtown Jackson and see how decisions made decades ago still shape life today.

Hear from people doing this work right now: Peace Lab staff and practitioners who live this every day. You are not just a student here. You actually help design how the week runs. The group accounts for everyone’s need and perspectives. You will practice what you learn in real time. Building a just community from scratch. Together.

Why you?

You are deciding who you are in the world. We think “peacemaker” is an identity worth trying on. Not the passive, conflict-avoiding kind you may have experienced. The kind who sees something wrong and has the courage and skill to act. Peace Lab comes from an Anabaptist Christian tradition, believes every person has sacred dignity, and works against viole to create the world we want to live in.