Our History

Peace Through Action USA was borne from a spiritual call experienced by our founder. Describing his motivation to take action to promote peace among people in the United States, Bob Reeg explained that “I found myself no longer satisfied to say a brief prayer or comment on a sad news story and then quickly move about my daily affairs as my response to acts of interpersonal violence all around us. God was challenging me to do more.”

Watch this brief video to hear more from our founder about the formation of Peace Through Action USA.

Presented this divine challenge, our founder proceeded to explore how he might make meaning of it in a practical way. He became intrigued by the notion of applying volunteering and service strategies toward the peace arena, reasoning that since interpersonal violence and interpersonal peace are intimate relational transactions between people and groups, this would be a perfect point of intervention for volunteers and compensated servant leaders. Our founder conducted a qualitative analysis of the U.S. social purpose sector, which determined that there were few other national-level organizations already directing their human capital uniquely toward U.S. domestic peacebuilding. With that information gathered, our founder proceeded to incorporate Peace Through Action USA in November 2015. Our first board of directors was elected and held its first meeting in February 2016.

The mission leadership team, all volunteer at the time, spent the organization’s first years putting in place the governance, compliance, accounting, and other operations policies and procedures. The arrival of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 slowed our ability to deliver our programmatic activities. We survived the moment and placed our first peace agent in our first community peace project in 2021.