The Peace Guerilla Project was created to fill gaps within current peacebuilding and peacemaking efforts.  The concept was conceived by international mediator, Dr Ben Hoffman, and published within the Peace Guerilla Handbook. 

The International Peace and Prosperity Project (IPPP), a unique citizen-initiated attempt to deal effectively with factors contributing to state failure and potential mass violence, which was housed at the Canadian International Institute of Applied Negotiation, provided proof of concept. 

The IPPP was a violence prevention demonstration project that began in 2004 in the troubled West African state of Guinea-Bissau.  The project was privately funded by Milt Lauenstein through the Alliance for Peacebuilding, Washington, D.C. 

The IPPP’s mission was to create a collaborative, research-based, action-oriented, strategic, flexible and catalytic, working with existing local and international actors to create a shared, coherent, indigenously-designed and adequately-resourced approach that would achieve maximum peacebuilding and development effectiveness in a weak state.

An independent review of the IPPP suggested that:

“many local observers, partners and participants consider that IPPP has contributed to the reduction of the threat of violence in the country, especially during the run-up to the election in 2005, through interventions with regard to the role of the military and SSR, support to the Citizen’s Goodwill Task Force and journalists, as well as initiation of efforts for reconciliation within the military and more broadly.”

The Peace Guerilla Project is housed at the Canadian International Institute of Applied Negotiation and operates through the wisdom of various strategic advisors.