Mandeeq Mental Health, led by Rowda Olad and Cherie Bridges-Patrick, along with Dr. Tecla Namachanja Wanjala, and their partners (ThinkPeace Learning and Support Hub and the Mary Hoch Center for Reconciliation), held a Virtual Regional Hub meeting on Wednesday, August 31st from 16:00 to 18:00 East Africa Time. As part of a larger initiative being conducted with the Helsinki Deaconess Foundation, this program brought together peacebuilders from Kenya, Somalia, Uganda, DR Congo, Sudan, South Sudan, and globally to speak about the intersections of trauma-healing, mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS), and social healing with their peacebuilding work.

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, individuals and communities around the world have turned to their religious or spiritual leaders for guidance and support. For many of these leaders, however, serving the unprecedented needs of their congregation members and their families can be highly stressful. To better understand the role religious leaders play in the lives of congregation members, the Al Amana Centre, based in Muscat, Oman, contracted MHCR to interview religious leaders about their experiences during the pandemic.

George Mason's Office of Scholarship, Creativity, and Research (OSCAR) has specific funding for undergraduates to create projects to pursue their interests and goals through the Undergraduate Research Scholars Program (URSP). Recently, all four MHCR undergraduate team members applied for and received this funding to pursue their research interests over the Summer 2022 term under the mentorship of Carter School Ph.D. Candidate and MHCR Associate Director Nicholas Sherwood.

The most recent MHCR webinar titled "Healing Across Cultures: Integrating Peacebuilding with Local Wisdom and Practices" was held on February 23rd and was held in collaboration with Think Peace Learning and Support Hub and the Think Peace Podcast: Where Peace Crosses the Mind. This event was convened to learn about the range of peacebuilding practices through a conversation with peacebuilders working within their own communities using their own traditional practices and addressed the questions, "How can local wisdom and practices expand our definition of ‘healing’? What can we learn from indigenous peacebuilding?"

In the autumn of 2021, the Mary Hoch Foundation (MHF) and Think Peace Learning and Support Hub were created to expand the scope and impact of the Mary Hoch Center for Reconciliation (MHCR). As non-academic affiliated partner organizations, they have an increased capacity to support ongoing reconciliation initiatives, both in the United States and abroad, and meet current needs for healing and transformation. MHF serves as a leader of these three entities and supports both the Think Peace Hub and MHCR in their complementary workflows.

Monday, September 20th, 2021, marked the official start of Peace Week Fall 2021 at the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace & Conflict Resolution.

Peace Week serves as an opportunity to engage in conversations regarding the ever-changing field of peacebuilding in an ever-changing world. The pandemic shed light on a number of ongoing issues within the global society; the pandemic also gave us a chance to step back, take a deep dive into issues of injustice and inequity, and decide how we want to move forward as a world. The theme of this year’s Peace Week is “Recovering Better for an Equitable and Sustainable World”.