Carl Stauffer was born and raised amidst the war in Vietnam. In 1994, he and his family moved to South Africa under the auspices of the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), a faith-based international relief and development agency. In South Africa, Stauffer worked with various transitional processes such as the Peace Accords, Community-Police Forums, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Local Community Development structures. From 2000 to 2009, Stauffer was appointed as the MCC Regional Peace Adviser for the Southern Africa region. His work has taken him to twenty African countries.
This interview is a very interesting resource for our JPIC commitment. In this interview, divided in three parts, Carl Stauffer shares with us how he is deconstructing and processing the systemic violence he has found during his ministry in Africa and now in the States. In the second part of this interview he remarkably uses a whole imaginary from the African traditions to develop the seven roles of a peacebuilder. He says: “I wanted to find a new language, and I wanted that language to be contextual to Africa, as well as contextual to my Christian faith, and many of the Christian leaders I was working with in Africa. So the language borrows from all of those, different streams and my need for creativity. I wanted to make it as contextual as I could within what I was experiencing at a gut visceral level, on the ground, in practicing peacebuilding in Africa for 16 years.”
Links:
Anti-Slavery campaign Interview Series with Carl Stauffer (Part 1)
Anti-Slavery campaign Interview Series with Carl Stauffer (Part 2)
Part Three will be posted next week.
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