Rita
Marie Johnson initiated a bill and passionately
lobbied for the creation of a Ministry of
Peace in Costa Rica's federal government,
which was passed into law last fall by unanimous
vote of its legislative assembly, under the
leadership of Nobel peace laureate President
Oscar Arias Sánchez.
Rita
Marie is the founder of the Academy for Peace
of Costa Rica, which is now working with the
Ministry of Education to train peace teachers
- called "Rasurs" - who will implement
an extraordinary practice for peacemaking
and conflict resolution she calls BePeace
in every high school in Costa Rica.
The
BePeace practice builds social and emotional
intelligence through a combination of the
HeartMath method, enabling the ability to
remain coherent under stress and "feel
peace," and Nonviolent Communication,
enabling the ability to connect with others
empathically and honestly for "speaking
peace." When you feel peace and speak
peace, you can then BePeace and teach others
this practice as well.
News
of this practice is spreading rapidly, and
in the last three years, BePeace has been
taught to graduate students from 16 countries
at the United Nations University for Peace,
representatives from 10 countries at the 2009
Summit of the Global Alliance of Ministries
and Departments for Peace, and has been initiated
in eight states in the USA, as well as Canada,
Europe and Central America.
Rita
Marie says, "I yearned all my life to
be a peacemaker, but I was missing a solid
'how-to.' With the practice of BePeace, I
improve every day in my ability to actually
model peace. I am a different person than
I was five years ago because of this skill.
People are amazed at how quickly they can
begin to have transformative experiences using
BePeace."
For more information about Rita Marie Johnson,
the Rasur Foundation, and the Academy for
Peace of Costa Rica, visit www.rasurinternational.org
and www.academyforpeacecr.org
or write to info@rasurfoundation.org.
