Volume 4, Issue 1 (2020)

We are indebted to Eddah M. Mutua, the guest editor, who worked with the scholars whose essays are assembled in this special feature on Bishop. C.K. Korir, a pioneer in grassroots peacebuilding. Joseph Okumu & Ron Pagnucco, Co-Editors. This special commemoration feature of Journal of Social Encounters focuses on the work of the late Bishop Cornelius Korir in advancing grassroots peacebuilding in North Rift region of Kenya. Bishop Korir is credited for developing a grassroots peacebuilding model popularly known as Amani Mashinani (Peace at the Grassroots) which brings together warring communities to collectively participate in activities geared at promoting peace. In this context, grassroots peacebuilding is understood in the same vein as locally led peacebuilding which is “an approach in which the people involved in, and most affected by, violent conflict work together to create and enact their own solution to prevent, reduce, and/or transform the conflict, with the support they desire from outsiders” (International Peace Institute, 2015). We memorialize this work in ways it embraces strategies for survival and co-existence among diverse ethnic groups, and has emancipatory potential to show “why and how locally led peacebuilding can add value and, importantly, make the world more peaceful” (Connaughton & Berns, 2020, p. 3). Eddah Mutua, Guest Editor.