Project Victory
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Project Victory is a non-profit educational organization that seeks to help Americans find ways to overcome the problems that threaten the future of life on earth. It was founded in 1985 by three men who had been national leaders in the anti-nuclear war movement of the early1980s. Craig Schindler, Theo Brown and Gary Lapid started Project Victory because they became convinced that the usual adversarial, win/lose approach to disputes was inadequate to solving such enormous problems as the threat of nuclear war and the possibility of environmental catastrophe. The name “Project Victory” was chosen to emphasize the need for a new understanding of victory—one that results in a win/win outcome that meets the needs of all who are involved in a conflict.
In its first six years of work, Project Victory was active across the country organizing dialogues, forums and other educational programs that looked for new ways to approach the nuclear stalemate between the United States and the Soviet Union. Project Victory was one of the few organizations in the country that brought together liberals and conservatives, “hawks” and “doves” for discussions about how to meet the twin goals of reducing the threat of nuclear war and meeting the challenges posed by the Soviet Union. During this period, Project Victory organized dialogues in more than 20 states across the country that featured elected officials of both parties, prominent intellectuals, members of Republican and Democratic administrations, and local community leaders from many different points of view.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, Project Victory expanded its dialogue work to focus on other aspects of peace and national security as well as other major threats to the future. Project Victory organized and conducted a series of large citizens dialogues about the storage and destruction of America’s chemical weapons and also facilitated programs that brought people of different views together to examine the future of U.S.-Russian relations. At the same time, the organization expanded its dialogue focus to other important and controversial issues such as the environment, health care, and race relations. Since 1994, most dialogue programs have dealt with issues like these and, in 2000, Communities Working Together as was created as a special project to coordinate these local dialogue programs.
Along with this work in dialogue and conflict resolution, during the past two decades Project Victory has designed and organized another set of programs that focus on personal responsibility, leadership and spiritual values. These trainings, workshops and seminars focus on the need for individuals to (in Gandhi’s famous phrase) “be the change they want to see in the world.” Project Victory has conducted day long workshops, weekend retreats, and weekly courses on the theme of “The Soul of Leadership” for civic groups, religious organizations, businesses, and educational institutions in dozens of locations around the country. The promotion of these leadership trainings continues and other courses are scheduled for the fall of 2004 and early in 2005.
