peace - Rotarian Action Group for Peace

Mujeres con Derechos Wages Peace through Women’s Empowerment

October 15th, 2019 By Mujeres Con Derechos, Menstrual Equality

Charlie Ruth Castro is a Rotarian, founding member of the Rotary E-Club Sogomaoso Global, entrepreneur, and Women's Rights activist. She founded MujeresConDerechos.org ("Women with Rights"), a social movement created by Colombian women and men leaders, where they focus on sharing honest, relevant and current information that promotes knowledge and empowerment of sexual and reproductive rights of girls and women in Latin America. Right now, Mujeres Con Derechos needs your help to deliver 10,000 menstrual cups to girls in rural areas and prisons in Latin Amerca.

RAGFP Presenting at Geneva Peace Week 2019

September 30, 2019, By Rotarian Action Group for Peace, Geneva Peace Week - Build Sustainable Peace within your Community

Be Inspired. Get Building. Wage Peace. Reem Ghunaim, the Executive Director of the Rotary Action Group for Peace, presents How to Build and Spark Sustainable Peace within your Community. This workshop illustrates the Institute for Economics and Peace's 8 Pillars of Positive Peace through successful peace projects created by Rotary Clubs all over the globe. During this workshop, you will learn about the eight aspects of Positive Peace and how to implement scientifically-driven strategies into your current and future peacebuilding projects. After a successful pilot presentation at the Rotary International's 2019 Conference in Hamburg, Reem was invited to present her workshop and workbook at GPW19. In addition to her invitation, her workbook will be featured in Rotary International's Positive Peace Academy by the end of the year. Through heartfelt stories, clear logic models, and thoughtful exercises, this workshop will leave you with the tools and confidence to strategically plan your next successful peace project!

My mother’s dream

September 13, 2019, By Reem Ghunaim, Published in Rotary Voices

I am a Rotary Peace Fellow from Palestine. My mother is a Palestinian refugee who fled her home with her family in 1948. My father’s entire village was displaced for two weeks in 1967. In fact, nearly half of my family are Palestinian refugees. I was born and raised in Tulkarem, home of two refugee camps that still exist from the Nakba of 1948. One camp is beside my former high school in the middle of downtown. The other is located at the Eastern entrance of my city. This refugee camp is the first thing I see every time I return home to visit my family. Read More

Help RAGFP Promote Peacebuilding Grants at Geneva Peace Week

August 16, 2019, By Rotarian Action Group For Peace

We are honored to be invited to participate at the Geneva Peace Week to promote Global Peacebuilding Grants. As you know, Global Grants provide many opportunities for Rotary clubs and districts to advance important causes. Of the different Global Grants available, Peacebuilding projects comprise the fewest number of Global Grants awarded. This isn’t because peacebuilding is less important to Rotarians, but that many Rotarians have difficulty conceptualizing what peace projects actually entail. One of the RAGFP's goals is to address this gap by utilizing peace education and convening with partners to create peace projects in conflict zones and beyond.

There is Now A Peace Pole in Every Nation On Earth

August 9, 2019, By May Peace Prevail on Earth, Published in May Peace Prevail On Earth International

It has been a decades-long goal of the Peace Pole Project to get a Peace Pole planted on the soil of every nation on our planet. That goal is about to finally be reached. Late in 2018 the Peace Pole Project was down to just two countries without at least one Peace Pole within their borders. Those two countries were Montenegro and Timor-Leste. Earlier this year, through the work of Patrick Petit who is the European Liaison of the Peace Pole Project’s parent organization the Goi Peace Foundation, a young woman named Zorana Višić planted a Peace Pole in the Western Baltic Nation of Montenegro. That milestone left only one nation without a Peace Pole.

The power of story to build a better future

August 6, 2019, By Kiran Singh Sirah, Published in Rotary International

Earlier this year, I had the privilege of visiting Hamburg, Germany, to present a series of talks at the Rotary International Convention and Peace Symposium. I always look forward to the symposiums and the chance to reconnect with other Rotary Peace Fellows. The event underscored for me how much better it is to hear people’s stories in real life, in person, as opposed to on the news. That’s not a new idea – in fact it informs all the work we do for our annual National Storytelling Festival (known as the largest and most prestigious storytelling gathering in the world) – but it’s an important one.

Mexican youth to action local plans for peace nationwide

July 10, 2029, by Institute for Economics and Peace, Published in VisionOfHumanity.org

Following the most violent year on record in Mexico, the second national Positive Peace workshop united 150 young peacebuilders in Hidalgo. The aim of the program was to provide both a deep knowledge of peace cycles as well as the skills required to make change within the local system to create and sustain systemic peacefulness. Many participants highlighted their acute awareness for daily acts of normalised violence. While the headline figures about organised crime and trafficking may seem intangible to grassroots peacebuilders, shifting consciousness to micro-violence observed daily offers a new framework for action. Read More

Rotary World Peace Conference 2020

July 9, 2019, Published in Rotary World Peace Conference 2020

The mission of the World Peace Conference 2020 is to bring together experts with solutions to major issues that are occurring in our personal lives, homes, schools, businesses, and communities, not just in Southern California, but, also, around the world. We are inviting leaders from health care, academia, government, public safety, religions, business, and communities to meet together to share the solutions presented by experts. The format will allow for action plans to be developed such that real and measurable actions can be undertaken when attendees return home. In addition, the conference will showcase learnings and positive change that have occurred in the four years, since the Rotary World Peace Conference 2016.

Rotarian Action Group for Peace founders strive for global harmony

April 24, 2019, Published in Rotary International

Since its creation in November 2012, the Rotarian Action Group for Peace has helped Rotary advance the cause of global harmony. Six-plus years later, Al Jubitz and Dennis Wong, two of the group’s founders, talked with senior editor Geoffrey Johnson about the group’s goals, its Peacebuilder Clubs and other peace tools, and how the RAG for Peace had its genesis in a Rotarian article.

Turning teens away from crime

By Ryan Hyland, Produced by Andrew Chudzinski, April 9, 2019, Published in Rotary International

Akeem Stephenson wanted to go to jail. He believed it was the only way he could free himself from a life of crime — a life he desperately wanted to change. After being arrested for a fourth time more than 10 years ago, for aggravated robbery, the teenager in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, was set to go to prison. But the judge saw something in Stephenson that suggested that he could redeem himself. So he gave Stephenson a choice: participate in an 18-month youth program, or serve the six-month sentence. For Stephenson, the choice was clear. He decided to transform his life through the PACT Urban Peace Program.