United Network of Young Peacebuilders in The Hague, Netherlands
To celebrate the International Day of Love the United Network of Young Peacebuilders and the Valentine Peace Project are organizing a campaigning day, whereby fair-trade flowers with peace poems will be handed out in public areas - to celebrate and advocate for the wider and varied faces of love in action and the work of peace in the world. Teachers are invited to reflect with students on questions of peace and love and their meaning within the local context, and to create statements or poetry. The winning poems will be shared in the US, Netherlands and other countries as scrolls shared on the street or wrapped around flowers to share in public places, parks, hospitals, train stations or shopping centres as a message of peace. We encourage sharing the statements and poems about the philosophical meaning of Peace and Love within your community.
We also encourage discussions after the day. To facilitate the discussion we ask you to reflect.
- How was it to think about the local meaning of love and peace with your students, friends or youth club members?
- Did you also engage in sharing the poems and statements in your community? If yes, how did the community react?
Thank you for participating in this wider vision of 14 February - Valentine's Day!
UNOY Peacebuilders is a global network of affiliated members and organizations active in the field of peacebuilding and conflict transformation. More members and affiliates use artistic means to work on the prevention of violence, or to address the negative consequences of it. This is one of the reasons why the 11th African Conference, held in November 2009 in the Netherlands, was dedicated to the exchange and learning of how to utilize different art means (comics, participatory videoing, peace poetry, dance, theatre and new media) to work on positive societal change. The Peace Poetry Contest is a follow up activity of this conference.
The VPP also works to highlight Fair Trade and distribute Fair Trade flowers (many from Kenya) and/or Fair Trade chocolate. Many of these products are shared around the world in February and we want to draw attention to the economic justice of Fair Trade in these Valentine industries.