Yuri Haasz holds a Master of Arts in Social Sciences with focus on systemic social innovation from the University of Chicago (USA), where he was a Rotary Global Grant Fellow from 2013 to 2015. He also holds a Master of Arts in International Relations with a focus on peace studies and conflict resolution from ICU (Tokyo, Japan), where he was a Rotary World Peace Fellow from 2009 to 2011.
At Transcend Peace University (Austria), Yuri specialized in peace education, peace journalism and peaceful conflict transformation. He also specialized with the Duke University (USA) program on Humanitarian Assistance and Human Rights in partnership with the United Nations (Geneva). He worked with Human Rights Watch, Division of North Africa and the Middle East in East Jerusalem.
Yuri has been facilitating groups for more than a decade alongside his life and work partner, Sandra Caselato, currently a certification candidate. They offer courses and consultancy for the development of groups, teams and leaders, processes of organizational change, and conflict transformation, combining principles of nonviolence with innovative collaborative-participatory approaches for co-creating a sustainable world.
Yuri and Sandra are references in Nonviolent Communication (NVC) in Brazil. They have been studying, experiencing and sharing NVC for more than 10 years in their home country and a dozen more countries around the globe, seeking to promote conflict transformation and systemic change for a more empathic and life-centered society.
They are founders of Sinergia Comunicativa, working within a diverse cross-section of society, including:
- Government executives and agencies
- Judges, prosecutors, public defenders, and courts
- Corporate clients
- NGOs
- Social movements
- Universities
- Communities
- Armed conflict zones
- Social projects in marginalized sectors of society
- ...and many more
