About Our Organization

At the intersection of social justice, education and the arts, Genesis at the Crossroads works to build peaceful communities that foster healing. Our non-profit organization fully recognizes that healing our fractured world is indeed a precondition for building peace anywhere and everywhere, locally and globally.  

We engage our audiences, participants, artists, thought leaders, educators, and students alike with the arts, deepen that work through education, and put it into community within a social justice framework. With 21 years of history since our founding in 1999, our cross-cultural collaborative performances and artistic presentations, educational and humanitarian work creatively engage community members in a context of shared purpose. In this way, they become deeply involved with us for the betterment of their own surrounding communities.

Saffron Caravan performers
Dancers at HAMSA-Fest
Saffron Caravan performing on Chicago’s WCPT 820
Genesis Academy Summer Institute students creating a peace sign
Creating peace quilts
Music Connects Us All mural project
Peacebuilding in Cambodia
Live messages during the Sounds of Healing premiere

Genesis at the Crossroads’ peacebuilding programs, models, places and spaces work together in an integrated fashion honoring diversity as our greatest asset. With a track record of over 150 programs to date, we have begun to institutionalize our model with our legacy piece, the Genesis Peace Hub. As a physical convener, it is mindfully designed to serve as an incubator, catalyst and accelerator for creating peaceful communities in Chicago, nationally, and around the world.

The Genesis Peace Hub’s virtual and in-person programs will add to our existing array of vibrant arts and cultural initiatives and educational offerings. This includes a Social Entrepreneurship Center to grow businesses aimed at re-imagining transformative solutions to remedy social justice issues – an economic engine for social good. The Genesis Peace Hub will also feature a teaching farm to innovate in the agricultural space as we source the needs of the Peace Hub itself and Chicagoland areas surrounding it. Its Sports and Social Change program will engage youth in active programs to augment leadership and teamwork alongside physical health and well-being. Our university partners will help Genesis study creativity and leadership on the Genesis Peace Hub to effect massive change at the policy level to support equitable funding that has the capacity to expand and scale this kind of work.

Though we have begun with Chicago, our strategic plan aims to open a collaborating array of Genesis Peace Hubs on four other continents over the next twenty years. As issues reverberate around the world, we have opportunities to learn so much from one another and combine our collective strength for global good.

We invite you to journey forward with Genesis at the Crossroads with passion and purpose towards an equitable planet that advocates for and shares prosperity and peace with all.