Objectives

The Children’s Global Peace Project provides children with learning opportunities for:

  • Global awareness and global literacy skills
  • Relaxation/peace skills
  • Critical thinking and problem solving skills
  • Communication skills (including Restorative Practice, and Nonviolent Communication Skills)
  • Creativity and innovation skills
  • Collaboration skills
  • Contextual learning skills
  • Technology and media skills
  • Leadership and ethics
  • Social responsibility
  • Flexibility and Adaptability

How We Do This

The project starts through collaboration with interested school districts to determine the most effective strategy to introduce or expand their peace curriculum.  This includes the following:


  1. Assessing current concerns with aggression in the classroom and surrounding community
  2. Reviewing the current curriculum associated with peace literacy and the available curriculums developed by Children's Global Peace Project, Partnership for 21st Century Skills, Peace Jam, Teaching Tolerance, Center for Non-violent Communications, Glowmundo, and other organizations
  3. Analyzing the gap between where the school is now and where we would like to be with their peace curriculum, behaviors, and parent/community involvement
  4. Developing a plan with educators and helping to identify grants and educational assistance to achieve lasting shifts in behavior
  5. Working with classroom teachers and teenage students to bring a chosen peace cirriculum to elementary and middle-school children
  6. Periodically assessing performance and making adjustments to the plan as necessary

Classroom-to-Classroom Partnership

During the time in the classroom children are involved in learning opportunities, and the teachers and older students are offered an experience of teaching peace skills. The children's experience and peace creations (Dances of Universal Peace, mindfulness practices, peace banners, personal letters, pictures, video, etc.) are then shared with a sister school in another country that experiences a similar program.  Teachers in the sister classrooms agree to support the relationship year to year as new children come through, and students are encouraged to join or to start their own peace club at their schools and are provided ideas and resources on how to do that.

History

The original project was envisioned and piloted in 2004 by Theresa Tolan at Levi Leonard Elementary School in Evansville, WI, USA.  One hundred and fifty children participated in a two-week Peace Project.  Children met in groups of 30 – 40 to create peace banners and participate in Dances of Universal Peace.  The culmination gathered all 150 children dancing together with the banners they created hanging around them.  The original peace banners were sent to schools in Sweden, Bangkok, Jakarta and Pakistan.

The Children Global Peace Project was formed in 2007 through a grant and fiscal sponsorship from the Oneness Project.  We are currently working with US schools in Wisconsin and Colorado, and international schools in Uganda, India, Iran, Brazil, and Germany.