Loni Bowers is a key leader in the ongoing work to restart Beyond War in British Columbia. Very active in Beyond War in the '80's, she really connected with the group spearheading the resurgence of the movement at the Beyond War Annual Meeting in April 2006. Upon returning home to Victoria following that inspirational gathering, she and the other members of the Victoria team have burst into action, offering monthly introductory presentations to friends, neighbors, community leaders and parliamentary representatives, and facilitating the Beyond War study series.

Loni loves working with people of all ages. Her career has been in public education (she still tutors) and as a leader with La Leche League and 4H. She is also a producer of community theatre and a member of the Christian Science church. She enjoys taking overall responsibility for projects in which she has the opportunity to help other people develop their talents along the way.

For La Leche League (LLL) Loni was coordinator of leader accreditation for British Columbia and associate coordinator for Canada. Her responsibilities were to develop leadership qualities in women and accredit them to represent LLL, so that they also could help to empower women to breastfeed and parent their children. Her present role in La Leche League is teaching empathic listening to prospective leaders, parents and others in helping professions. She also facilitates workshops on various topics including conflict resolution, empathic confrontation and group leading.

These skills are very useful to her work in Beyond War. Empathic listening is designed to help people clarify their own feelings, summarize their situation and so be empowered to move ahead and make their own best decisions. The speaker feels respected and eventually able to open up to listen and receive helpful information.

In her Beyond War work Loni loves getting people to think about things that they haven't thought about before to see them moved. As Margaret Wheatley reinforces in her book, Turning to One Another, a lot of the work is taking the time, having the conversations with people, one person at a time. She also very much enjoys working closely with her husband, Christopher, on Beyond War projects.

One of the questions that arose for Loni in facilitating the Beyond War study series was, “What is the role of citizens of one country when the actions of another country are endangering all of our security?” The answer that is emerging from the group discussion is, "to witness, listen, educate, dialogue, and facilitate collaboration". Her daughter Ashleigh, also an active team member, adds, "Every responsibility that a citizen of the offending country has, except for voting."

Another question Loni is working with is, "Why do we keep making it so complicated?" Periodically over the past 3500 years, some inspirational person brings us back to the directive (selfless, but ultimately selfish) that we should treat others the way we would like to be treated. As Jim, a member of our study series says, "This is not rocket surgery." Why is it taking us so long to get it? We know it but we keep losing track of it. In the end it doesn't matter if your politics is right or left -- as long as people get what they need from somewhere.

From her work with Beyond War in the 80's and in the present, spreading the message of Beyond War seems to Loni to be the most simple and direct way of reaching many people with the fundamental ideas we need to survive, thrive and evolve.