The Lab space will be designed to embody the Lab’s four core principles:

Convene

The PeaceTech Lab will be the first major collaboration among conflict management professionals, the tech sector, academia, and US government dedicated to harnessing the power of technology and conflict management for peacebuilding.

The heart of the PeaceTech Lab will be a flexible, scalable space for collaboration comprised of communal work tables and mobile workstations. The flex space can also be transformed into a large virtual staging area where Lab staff, peacebuilders, and technology volunteers can convene en masse in response to crises around the world.

Find out more about PeaceTech Exchanges, workshops organized to empower peacebuilders in conflict zones with low-cost, easy to use technology.

Connect

The Lab’s Open Situation Room, outfitted with multiple monitors, is designed to provide a real-time connection with the world’s hotspots. Staff members can gather here to monitor, analyze, and share information coming in from local media, citizen journalists, and video conversations with our partners on the ground. In a city full of closed “situation rooms” the Lab will provide an open space for informed decision-making, ensuring that responses from DC are rooted in groundtruth and local needs.

Build

The PeaceTech Lab will be a place where thinkers and doers can envision, prototype, and produce new technology concepts to be used in the field, such as mobile applications, mapping software, and new communication tools.

At any given time, the PeaceTech Lab will be home to multiple cross-disciplinary teams working intensely on small group projects. Glassed-in meeting rooms of various sizes, each equipped with monitors and conference tables, will provide space for each project to develop. When not in use as project spaces, these rooms can host breakout sessions, small meetings, and conference calls. Additionally, the Lab will have a 21st century workshop equipped with rapid fabrication technology, such as 3D printers, for hacking and prototyping new applications of off-the-shelf technology.

Inspire

The PeaceTech Lab will work with peacebuilders locally and globally to design and implement new communication strategies across all types of media — radio, television, social media, and print — to inspire change in the attitudes and behaviors that incite violence. Back at home, the PeaceTech Lab will be a place where people of different backgrounds, disciplines, and skills can inspire each other. Workstations at communal tables help to break down traditional research siloes.

Find out more about our in-country media programs:

• Sawa Shabab, a peacebuilding radio drama for youth in South Sudan
• Salam Shabab, the first real life television program made to promote the empowerment of Iraqi youth