Be the change you wish to see in the world
- Mahatma Ghandi
What legacy will you leave?
The Story behind Legacies from Executive Director and Co-Founder, Emily Cook
Legacies Peace Center began long before it had a name.
In 2007, I lost my sister, Courtney, to cancer. Courtney cared deeply about people, particularly women and children, and about making a difference in the lives of others. Her life—and her loss—changed the
direction of mine.
During those years, I also came to understand more deeply the importance of wellness, movement, nature, community, and care. An early vision began to take shape: a physical place where people could gather, connect, learn, heal, and simply be well in community.
At the time, I did not know exactly what that place would become.
My own path continued through social work, higher education, and peacebuilding. Eventually, doctoral study in International Conflict Management, Peacebuilding, and Development gave me a framework for connecting ideas I had previously understood as separate: relationships and well-being, community and conflict, leadership and power, food and land, environmental sustainability, and our responsibility to the people who will come after us.
My collaboration and research with Indigenous women further deepened my understanding of relationality, reciprocity, responsibility to future generations, the living Earth, and forms of leadership rooted in relationship rather than domination. Those lessons became part of a much larger question about how we build organizations and communities that reflect the values we hope to see in the world.
Emily (left) and Courtney (right).
Along the way, I met Anne through our doctoral program. She brought her own scholarship and experience in conflict management, cultural preservation, women's leadership, and community—and her own deep commitment to the question of what we leave behind.
Over time, our visions converged.
We began asking questions that continue to shape Legacies Peace Center today:
What if peacebuilding begins within us?
What if healthier people help create healthier communities?
What if wellness, relationships, food systems, environmental sustainability, women's leadership, cultural knowledge, and community resilience are not separate issues, but interconnected parts of how communities thrive?
What if the way we do the work matters as much as the work itself?
And what if we intentionally build something now with the generations that come after us in mind?
That is how Legacies Peace Center came to be.
The name is intentional. It asks us to think about the people who came before us, the people beside us now, and the generations who will inherit what we leave behind.
For me, that reaches beyond Courtney, too. It carries the legacies of the many people in my family I have loved and lost, as well as the generations of ancestors who came before them—including the Native American roots within my family history—and the many ways their lives continue to shape my own.
What legacy are we leaving behind?
Today, that question is becoming tangible through programs such as Sacred Ground Wellness: Embodied Peace Collective, which approaches individual and collective well-being as part of peacebuilding; Rooted & Rising, which reconnects food, land, people, and community; and the Regenerative Women's Leadership Institute, which creates space for women to develop forms of leadership grounded in relationship, collaboration, sustainability, and community.
And now, another part of that original vision is becoming real.
In January, Legacies Peace Center plans to open its first physical home in Dahlonega, Georgia—a place where people can gather, learn, practice, collaborate, build relationships, and turn ideas into action.
For me, there is something profound about watching a vision that began so many years ago become a place people will actually be able to walk into.
But the building is not the vision. The community is.
Our goal has never been simply to create one organization or serve one community. We want to learn locally, build programs and practices that are sustainable and accessible, collaborate generously, and share what works. That may mean helping another community develop a garden or foodways initiative, making women's leadership programming available both in person and virtually, partnering across organizations and disciplines, or creating a hub where ideas about peacebuilding can become lived practice.
We think about this work across generations—not simply in terms of what Legacies can accomplish this year, but what the choices we make now might make possible decades or even centuries from now. Courtney's life helped begin that journey for me.
Each year, Courtney's Day of Giving is an opportunity to honor her legacy while also asking a larger question:
Whose legacy do you carry?
Perhaps it is someone you have lost. Someone whose work continues beside you today. Someone who taught you what kind of person you wanted to become. Or perhaps it is a generation you will never meet, but whose future you are helping shape now.
You can give in memory.
You can give in honor.
You can give in hope for what comes next.
And you can begin asking what your own legacy will be.
Courtney loved the reminder to be the change we want to see in the world.
Legacies Peace Center is one way we are trying to put that idea into practice—through the relationships we build, the communities we strengthen, the resources we share, the way we lead, and the choices we make about what we leave behind.
For those who came before us.
For those beside us.
For those who will come after us.
What legacy will you leave?
Join us as we build peace within ourselves, our communities, and the larger world.