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Who We Are

Brooklyn Peace Center is an asset-based community organization (501c3) that serves as a catalyst for peacebuilding and conflict transformation in Brooklyn and beyond. Through peacebuilding activities, arts and culture events, webinars and in-person workshops and seminars, the Brooklyn Peace Center engages and equips community residents, activists and artists, clergy and clinicians, and all who have an interest in peacebuilding.

Brooklyn Peace Center also serves as an umbrella for agencies that promote peace, equip community residents, and provide needed services to the community. Partners include:

  • New York Mennonite Immigration Program
  • Radical Living Youth Program
  • Believers Mennonite Garifuna Ministries
  • Peace Café & Thrift Store

Board of Directors

Jason Storbakken

Jason Storbakken

Cofounder and President

Jason Storbakken (he/him) is a Mennonite minister. He has lived in Brooklyn for twenty years. He holds an MDiv from Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York and a Doctor of Ministry from Boston University School of Theology. He is pastor at Manhattan Mennonite Fellowship and for more than a decade he has provided direction to the spiritual life at the Bowery Mission. Jason is author of Radical Spirituality: Repentance, Resistance, Revolution (Orbis) and Bowery Mission: Grit and Grace on Manhattan’s Oldest Street (Plough).

Vonetta Storbakken

Vonetta Storbakken

Cofounder and Treasurer

Vonetta Storbakken (she/her) is cofounder of Brooklyn Peace Center. And she is also cofounder and executive director of Radical Living, an environmental justice youth program. She has lived in Bedford-Stuyvesant since she was 10 years old. As a child growing up in Bed-Stuy in the 1980s and ‘90s, she was a witness to urban decay and the eventual renewal. Vonetta earned a BA in Business from SUNY Stony Brook and an MS in Urban Environmental Systems Management from the Pratt Institute.

Ruth Yoder Wenger

Ruth Yoder Wenger

Vice President

Pastor, North Bronx Mennonite Church

Merv Stoltzfus

Merv Stoltzfus

Secretary

Executive Conference Minister, Atlantic Coast Conference, Mennonite Church USA

Hyacinth Stevens

Hyacinth Stevens

Board Member

Bishop, Lancaster Mennonite Conference

Leonard Dow

Leonard Dow

Board Member

Vice President of Community and Church Development, Everence

Mauricio Chenlo

Mauricio Chenlo

Board Member

Minister, Mennonite Mission Network

John Bomberger

John Bomberger

Board Member

(Retired) CEO, Choice Books