We're growing - and our next opportunity is our biggest yet! We have been invited to train 50 teachers from 25 schools in western Uganda how to use our "Are We Together?" peace curriculum effectively. They will be participating in a 3-day festival to train 5,000 students how to use arts for peace, organized by Mentoring Peace Champions Uganda. "Are We Together?" will give them a practical...
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Friends, nous sommes ensemble – we are together – for peace! I produced this song in Goma, DRC, where peace is desperately needed. I wrote it in minutes, on a short flight because over 100 rebel groups made road travel unsafe. Once we landed, rebel fighting prevented us from completing our humanitarian missions to help internally displaced people fleeing conflict. We passed deserted homes and...
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I was excited to meet Milcah Kizitu this month. She joined our peace education movement last year from a training workshop our local coordinators, Chrispo and Joshua, led. I'll let Milcah share what happened next in her own words.
After the workshop, I started preaching peace in the school right away. I taught the teachers, I shared with them what we had learned in the workshop, and we...
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Rev. Fredrick Kisitu is a very loving man. He pastored in a slum in Kampala for years, then started a school for disadvantaged children when he retired. But he didn't know that peace included his Muslim neighbours until he made friends with a Muslim at our CryPeace workshop.
Rev. Kisitu shares,
"That seminar actually changed me so much, talking about peace at home, peace with our neighbours,...
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Today, I had a meeting with Joshua Oyergiu, our peace partner in Uganda. We are planning how to expand our peace program in 2025. When Joshua started sharing from his heart how relevant our peace curriculum is to his students, and how he wished everyone, young and old alike, had the opportunity to learn how to nurture more peaceful relationships, I asked him to please share his message with you....
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Why ever war? That's a question Larry Gibbs has been asking himself ever since he saw this military cemetery in Sainte Avold, France, when he was eleven years old. Larry shares, "This is one of our family photos of Sainte Avold Cemetery in France. I was not quite 12 years old when we visited it in 1961.... I was so struck by the image, and the immense tragedy that it represented, that I wrote the...
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When we look at the world's needs, and how much effort is required to maintain or restore peace, peacebuilding can seem daunting. To maintain my own peace in the struggle, I try to remember that I am only required to offer that which I can. Now, that may be a lot - it might be sacrificial financial resources, a lot of time, energy, and skills - but it will be possible. To be consistent with peace...
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It's a somber day - April 7, 2024. It's the 30th anniversary of the day when all hell broke loose against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Within 100 days, over one million Tutsis, and their Hutu allies, were dead. Killed. In Rwanda. Please take a moment to remember them with me now.
I am marking this anniversary in Uganda. Next week I will be in Rwanda, visiting memorial sites and learning about the long,...
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The hardest thing I have seen yet in Kampala are the people subsisting off the Kiteezi Landfill. 1.2 tonnes of garbage are dumped here every day. It's bubbling with methane and unfit even for maribou storks to feed off of, but dozens of people subsist by scavenging for pig slop and selling plastic for $1/kg. A secondary industry has sprung up to serve the recyclers. Entrepreneurs sell peanuts,...
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Happy World Day of Peace!
It's 2024 – a new year for a fresh start. As we reflect on 2023, we can't help but cry for peace. While Gaza is being bombed in response to Hamas' brazen attack and hostage taking, the war in Ukraine continues, and other conflicts foment, it is clear that humanity needs to learn peace.
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