Alex Poppe 
Do you remember the first time you connected with Preemptive Love? Perhaps you signed up for this blog, or you made a donation for an issue you supported. Then, you might have seen a blog post or an Instagram story about a successful outcome: a heart surgery you made happen, or people pinned down by ISIS in Mosul receiving food and water you brought, or Syrian earthquake victims receiving warm, quilted family-sized blankets, and you cheered because you were part of a community that made that moment happen. At that moment, we connected through our kindness and empathy, the essence of our humanity. Our success built trust. You trusted us with your generosity, and we trusted you to partner alongside us. Together, we’ve had 15 years of building trust from our shared successes as together we worked toward making a more peaceful world possible.
By now, you might have heard about our merger with Search for Common Ground, the world’s largest peacebuilding organization. Their achievements in peacebuilding were celebrated with a 2018 Nobel Peace Prize nomination “for having “made a profound impact in our world, inspiring and equipping people […] to find our shared humanity.” They have been finding creative, sustainable solutions to violent conflicts for over 40 years.
Search for Common Ground views conflict as an opportunity to find creative and sustainable solutions where everyone wins. Because everyone wins, everyone has a stake in protecting the outcome, so peace lasts. While acknowledging that conflict is inevitable, Search believes violence is not. Like Preemptive Love’s tenant to love anyway, Search for Common Ground embraces adversarial advocacy: bringing those in conflict together to find creative solutions because we share commonalities. Change is always possible.
Our shared vision of a world free from violence united our two organizations. Working with the same audacity and empathy and in collaboration with local partners, we see our union not as additive but as synergistic. Our partnership creates an unprecedented force for peacebuilding as we pioneer a different path forward for non-profits.
Hope is the first casualty of violent conflict. As we enter this new partnership for peace, we look back and honor the community of peacemakers whose work has kept hope alive through war, displacement, violence, economic devastation, and natural disasters. Thank you for inspiring us and others to unabashedly pursue a world free of violence.
Learn more about our new partnership for peace by visiting our shared microsite. And get ready! We can’t wait to see what we accomplish together!
