On the occasion of International Day of Peace 2021, ASB Non-Formal-Education team together with the adolescents and the women’s groups invited all community members for a mini-peace festival.
The promotion of peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development is one of the main goals of the United Nations in 2021. In this optic and on the occasion of International Peace Day 2021, ASB Non-Formal-Education team together with the adolescents and the women’s groups invited all community members for a mini-peace festival where all could express their views while building up a collective peace corner.
The peace corner started early in the morning with the support of two brothers, Yousef and Ismail, as “goodwill ambassadors” from Angola who speak English and Portuguese. They welcomed us in Italian and informed the people, welcoming them to celebrate International Day of Peace by expressing their views, drawing and/or writing messages on the peace birds.
The birds were then stuck on the cardboard trees that the adolescent’s class had cut out and set up against a corrugated iron wall, a space where many people pass but don’t usually stop for a morning chat.
The women’s group participated the previous day by cutting out the bird templates to distribute to the participants and comers by.
Participants were then invited to share their views on what peace means to them:
“Peace means: peacefully. Fighting is bad” said Rezwan.
Tahere, a young girl from Afghanistan who teaches English to her community told us that “peace means accepting all differences, all humans must respect each other it’s not important who you are, it’s not important what is your nationality or what is your skin colour”.
Yousef stressed the importance of education as he told us that “Peace is the family with happy faces in their house, peace is education and health, everybody needs peace to have the human rights”.
Another person talked about personal harmony, he said that “not having conflicts emotionally, physically is called peace, when you are totally enjoying your life”.
Ismael concluded that: “For me, peace means union, the day that persons stay together, happiness, friendship, freedom”.
The peace corner initiative united men, women, children, adolescents, teachers, actors and ASB staff in a festive way, which definitely boosted the community’s morale.
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