Voices raised for peace
Peaceful co-existence and the building of a better world are the ultimate aims for every Girl Guide and Girl Scout. During the week running up to International Peace Day, an annual event held on 21 September, a group of young WAGGGS members participated in a seminar, run in French, to learn about advocacy action for peace. The seminar, ‘Voices raised for peace’, took place in WAGGGS World Centre, Sangam, in India. India’s national hero, Mahatma Gandhi, with his peaceful actions, was a natural inspirational choice for the participants. These young women from Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia, Mauritius, Togo and DR Congo went home to their national Member Organizations with ready-made action plans to implement advocacy projects in their countries, beginning on Peace Day 2008.
Peace Day was established by the United Nations (UN) in 1981 and is devoted to commemorating and strengthening the ideals of peace. It’s a day of global ceasefire and non-violence, an invitation to all nations and people to honour a 24-hour cessation of hostilities.
Girl Guides take action on Peace Day
To kickstart their projects, Rima from Lebanon and Samiha from Tunisia will produce Pinwheels for Peace with their Guide groups and display them in public to raise awareness for Peace Day. Nicole from Togo will send a viral email on 21 September to invite as many people as possible to listen to the United Nations’ Peace Bell on-line and Eshrak from Jordan is going to invite representatives from all religious groups in her country to unite in mosques and churches for the Universal Peace Prayer.
In Lebanon, Sabine will take her Guide group onto the streets to march with white candles as symbols of peace and invite passers-by to join their vigil, while putting up posters with peace messages along their way.
Edna in DR Congo, Noura in Tunisia and Charlene in Mauritius will each throw a party and run activities to raise awareness with the general public on International Peace Day.
What you can do!
Follow the example of the Peace seminar participants and run your own Peace Day activity with your Guide group. For inspiration have a look at ten ways to promote Peace Day. Guías de México promoted peace creating pinwheels (picture right).
Your comments
edna 22 September 2008 - 11.14AM (GMT)
C'est trs formidable
KAYA özdemir 21 September 2008 - 7.38PM (GMT)
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to seek, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to throw away;
A time to tear, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate,
A time for war, and a time for peace.
We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.
U. Savas Baran 18 September 2008 - 10.57PM (GMT)
Sunday 21 september we will celebrate three actions together. European Union Information will organizing European Mobility week activities and we are helping several workshops and to have fun
Main workshops
European Union Information center introducing their new children books on climate change
Children will have photos with hero of the books Lokum
A Caterpiller board game will be available on peace climate and mobility
polar bears right is a photograph stage where children will be together with polar bear mascots. And a tree will be planted for each of them
Ladders and snakes game on knowledge of EU
A treasure hunt to find peace messages
A troop will make a giant dove
Another troop will make paper doves and teach then to others
A stand will give information on global warming
another troop will make pin wheels and teach it to other brownies
A troop learn UNESCO peace games and teach others
A troop will make a stand for UNESCO Manifesto 2000
pledge
there will be some envronmental activities including A Clean up the world activities
some leaders will participate to UN japanese peace bell ringing and a minute of silence
YIGGGS
alia- kuwait 18 September 2008 - 2.12PM (GMT)
Dear sumaiyah, your lovely words about peace have encourged me to think of doing it every day in class. It's true, peace is a daily action that we ned to pass it to all generations.
Sumaiyah Najib 17 September 2008 - 2.15PM (GMT)
I would say I celebrate Peace Day almost every day by thinking how we could establish peace in the wholewide world. That's how it should be.Peace can never occur suddenly by celebrating it once in a year. We need to celebrate it every day by taking serious action about it.
Sumaiyah Najib,
Bangladesh International School EngSec
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Page 1 of 1
Have your say
Post your comments about this page here. For general questions, go to Contact. When posting comments, please be considerate of others and refrain from abusive or off topic posts. Comments will only be uploaded if they are considered appropriate. Email addresses or any other personal details will not be allowed. HTML code will be removed from comments; linebreaks will be kept intact.