Blog
Peace One Day and Young People
Of all POD's achievements, the thing that makes me happiest and proudest and which - above all else - makes me feel that what we are doing is truly worthwhile, is our work with young people. Thanks to our free education resource, which in the US is underwritten by Ben & Jerry's, educators in 133 countries around the world are teaching hundreds of thousands of young people about the importance of peace, non-violence, inter-cultural cooperation and the link between sustainability and peace. After Peace Day this year, we received messages from teachers and students telling us what they did for peace on 21 September. It made for cheering reading.
In Seksaria Sushilla Devi Public School in Uttar Pradesh, India, an event involving over 1,000 parents, teachers, students and local government officials saw a peace pole garlanded with hundreds of fragrant flowers. At Banani International School, near Lusaka in Zambia, an assembly was held, during which a speech was made about the origin of the International Day of Peace. After the speech, holy writings from various religions were read out and with each reading a candle was lit to symbolise unity. At Woodlands School in Blackpool, year 7 students wrote beautiful poems about war to recognise Peace Day and at Little London School in Leeds, a ‘peace trail' event took place through the City, taking participants to sites in the city centre that would raise awareness of local and global issues including war, asylum, destitution, equality and human rights. In the Caribbean, the Girl Guides Association of the St Vincent and the Grenadines held a rally to encourage understanding, tolerance and solidarity ‘amongst all people and cultures' and at Sea Cliff Elementary School in New York, USA, teachers and students formed a gigantic peace sign outside in the school grounds to mark the day. Of course, these examples are just the tip of an ever-growing ice burg.
I still go into schools all the time to talk to young people about Peace Day and, what strikes me most, is the positive reception that I get every single time. I often take the kids through an exercise in which I ask them who knows somebody living somewhere else in the world. Out of a class of 37, between them, they usually know, on average, people living in 40 different countries around the world. This, I tell them, is how they can help us spread the message of Peace Day.
I love the positivity and openness of young people. Personally, I hated school and it doesn't take me long to spot the kid who might be unhappy, perhaps because of bullying, which I experienced myself. It was important to me that there were strong components within POD's Education materials that explored ways to combat bullying; the link between bullying in the playground and bullying on a global scale is becoming more and more obvious to me. I see Peace Day as a catalyst for this important work and our Education materials are the tools that bring it to life.
The week after next, I'm doing a school assembly in Hampshire over Skype and early in 2010 I'll be visiting a school in Budapest. Later this year I'll be heading to Sackville School in West Sussex UK to meet Sammy Purcell, the 14 year-old winner of our recent YouTube My Take on Peace video contest, who made a 2-minute film for peace, Ever since his victory was announced, people from all around the world have been contacting him, via social networking sites or via the POD site itself. I hope he is feeling really good about what he has achieved and I hope that, to some of you out there, what he did might act as an inspiration.
Whether you are a parent, a student or a teacher, ask your school to get involved and make use of POD's free, on-line resources. Young people, more than any other group understand the value and the potential of Peace Day; in the classroom you can find POD at its very best.