COMMUNITY ORGANIZING & PRACTICING PEACE: COPP HOURS
In a world that seems permeated with violence and uncertainty, our LAADR trainings are not to be confused with charity. Instead, their purpose is to empower leaders through conflict resolution and mediation training to make the necessary changes in their own communities for a more peaceful and prosperous reality. Our innovative way in which to achieve measurable results is outlined below.

COPP Hours: Community Organizing & Practicing Peace
ICOP knows that results cannot be produced top-down by professionals alone, but are maximized by a concerted joint effort between the recipients and trainers. Through an economic theory of empowerment called Co-Production, participants of LAADR trainings will "pay" for services through the universal resource of time rather than money. For each hour of LAADR training, a participant will commit to one hour of "Community Organizing & Practicing Peace," or a COPP Hour.

It is easy to quickly calculate the staggering ripple effects of this payment system on a community:

• 1 Trainee(s) X 40 Training Hours = 40 COPP Hours
• 50 Trainee(s) X 40 Training Hours = 2,000 COPP Hours
• 100 Trainee(s) X 40 Training Hours = 4,000 COPP Hours

International Commission of Peace LAADR trainings are designed to incorporate between 50 and 100 participants simultaneously. Therefore, each LAADR initiative will maximize results by empowering the trainees to take action and guarantee between two and four thousand hours of Community Service in post-conflict communities!

What Qualifies as a COPP Hour?
We believe that COPP hours should not have a strict definition handed down by our organization, but instead should grow from the unique ideas and passions of LAADR trainees. We at ICOP would much rather have participants tell us what constitutes a COPP Hour rather than try to impart our ideas upon them. At the completion of a LAADR training, the participants will collectively make a list of 15 - 20 activities that they feel capture the essence of Community Organizing and Practicing Peace. There are only four simple guidelines:

1. Empower Others with Peace When in the community, trainees must make an effort to share what they learned in the LAADR training.

2. Free of Charge No monetary payment can be received while earning a COPP Hour.

3. There is no "I" in COPP Hours COPP Hours must be community oriented, and cannot be conducted alone. Cleaning up a room or office does not count! Cleaning up a street does.

4. SIXTY equals ONE A participant must volunteer for a full 60 minutes to qualify for one COPP Hour, although all 60 minutes do not have to be completed at the same time. Multiple activities of less than an hour can accumulate into one COPP Hour.

How Do You Keep Track of COPP Hours?
Various mechanisms for tracking COPP Hours are used dependant on the community receiving the LAADR training. The basic, but adjustable, structure consists of two main tenets:

1. COPPs are Democratic LAADR trainees will democratically elect multiple Coordinators (dependent on seminar size) who will plan optional group activities to earn COPP Hours. The Coordinators will also forge relationships with organizations in the community and schedule special events that are restricted to those individuals who have repaid a certain level of COPP Hours. A Treasurer will be elected to keep track of COPP Hours for the group.

2. Tri-Pods Participants will keep each other motivated by working in teams of three to earn their COPP Hours. Under this system, each group of three (or "tri-pod") will be responsible for 120 COPP hours collectively:

• 40 hours X 3 Team Members = 120 COPP Hours

Members of the group will not be recognized as finishing their COPP Hours until all 120 hours have been earned.

In certain circumstances, ICOP will provide a small stipend to a community as seed money for an ICOP Regional Center for Peace. Through these Centers, LAADR Alumni will be able to track their COPP Hours, Participate in Continuing Education Seminars, and network with other practitioners of peace.

Where Did the Idea of COPP Hours Come From?
COPP Hours were conceived by ICOP in a meeting with Dr. Edgar Kahn of the Time-Dollar Institute. A renowned advocate for social justice, his theory of Co-Production has been successful in empowering underrepresented populations world-wide. One of many examples for successful implementation of Co-Production recently took place in Vietnam. Doctors Without Borders found itself facing a runaway AIDS epidemic with just enough medicine to treat 300 individuals. They decided to use Co-Production principles to maximize the potential impact of that medicine, making it known they would treat only those individuals who would commit to becoming AIDS prevention activists. The medicine became the payment for activism, and the activists spread through their communities showing pictures of themselves as emaciated AIDS sufferers and as healthy individuals. They explained to their fellow citizens that AIDS was not an inevitable death sentence, but that it could be cured by medicine, or better yet by prevention. The rate of new infections plummeted.

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