What does it mean to invest in peace?
It might bring to mind international diplomacy or efforts to resolve conflict. Peace can also occur much closer to home: a family finding stable housing, neighbours having enough food, people listening across differences, or a community creating space where everyone has the opportunity to flourish.
That broader understanding of peace is especially meaningful during Peace Week, September 21–30, coordinated in Waterloo Region by the Kindred Credit Union Centre for Peace Advancement. This year’s theme, “Invest in Peace — For Everyone, Everywhere, Every Day,” reminds us that peace is not simply the absence of conflict. It is something we build through the choices we make and the way we show up for one another.
For Kindred, that idea has deep roots.
Peace is part of our story
Kindred began in 1964 when 22 Waterloo County Mennonites came together around a simple idea: by pooling their financial resources, they could help one another and their faith community.
That cooperative approach grew from their Anabaptist faith and a desire to follow Jesus’ example of love, compassion, grace, community, sacrifice, and non-violence, putting those beliefs into practice in everyday life.
They purposefully chose the credit union model, a financial cooperative built on people pooling their resources to meet shared needs and support one another.
More than six decades later, that same commitment lives on in our purpose: cooperative banking that connects values and faith with finances, inspiring peaceful, just, and prosperous communities.
Our understanding of peace has also grown. Peace is connected to justice, dignity, reconciliation, and wellbeing. It asks us to consider not only how we respond to conflict, but how we help create the conditions in which people and communities can thrive. That is one reason Kindred's relationship with Conrad Grebel University College has been so important.
Creating a place for peace to grow
In 2011, Kindred committed a transformative $1 million gift toward the creation of what is now the Kindred Credit Union Centre for Peace Advancement at Conrad Grebel University College. The Centre officially opened in 2014 and brings together academics, practitioners and emerging peacebuilders to explore and put into practice new approaches to peace.
One of the organizations that has called the Centre home since it opened is Project Ploughshares and this year, it is celebrating an extraordinary milestone.
50 years of turning swords into ploughshares
Project Ploughshares was established in 1976 and has spent the past 50 years advancing sustainable peace through research, advocacy, and action. Its work has addressed nuclear weapons, the global arms trade, emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, space security, and climate security.
“Our name comes from the biblical vision in Isaiah of transforming swords into ploughshares — turning something intended for destruction into something that helps communities grow and flourish,” explains Paul Heidebrecht, Director of the Kindred Credit Union Centre for Peace Advancement and Interim Director of Project Ploughshares. “There is something beautifully practical about that image. Peace isn't passive. It is creative. It asks what we can build instead.”
Project Ploughshares has been asking that question for half a century, bringing careful research and a distinctly human perspective to some of the world's most difficult questions. Its roots are closely connected with Conrad Grebel, where co-founder Ernie Regehr began working in 1976, around the time Grebel launched Canada's first Peace and Conflict Studies program.
During Peace Week, visitors can explore 50 Years of Turning Swords Into Ploughshares, a Grebel Gallery exhibit featuring archival materials, art, campaigns and stories from Ploughshares' first five decades. The exhibit continues until September 30.
Peace begins close to home
Global peacebuilding matters deeply. So does the work happening on our own streets.
Living out Kindred’s commitment to peaceful, just, and prosperous communities includes supporting organizations working toward housing stability and food security. It means helping strengthen the community organizations and faith communities that care for their neighbours. It means teammates volunteering their time and expertise. And it means continuing to ask how the decisions we make as a financial cooperative can contribute to individual and collective wellbeing.
For Kindred, Peace Week is an opportunity to celebrate organizations such as Project Ploughshares and Kindred CPA, and it is also an invitation to reflect on our own role.
Our founders showed us that ordinary people pooling what they have can accomplish something remarkable. More than 60 years later, we're still practicing that - working together towards a more peaceful, just and prosperous world.
Check out the calendar of events for Peace Week HERE.