LONDON, 14th September 2010 – Peace One Day, supported by Skype, has launched its first interactive Global Education Resource. Developed for 12-18 year olds, and free to all, the Peace One Day Global Education Resource is designed to encourage students to appreciate their own individual capacity to make a positive difference to their local community and the world. The Resource is available in online magazine format, in the six official languages of the United Nations: Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), English, French, Russian and Spanish. The global release of this Resource will no-doubt strengthen Peace One Day’s efforts to reach another one of its inspiring goals: to provide resource materials to every school on earth, motivating a generation to become the driving force behind the vision of a united and sustainable world.
Peace One Day has built on the strength of their UK and USA curriculum-specific Resources, which have been such a success that there are now over 5000 educators using Peace One Day Education Resources in these two countries alone. Containing 13 lesson plans, the new Peace One Day Global Education Resource allows young people to explore a variety of issues, such as intercultural co-operation, global citizenship, non-violence, ending bullying and the link between sustainability and peace. Designed to encourage positive conversations about making the world a better place, the Global Education Resource includes a new ‘Intercultural Co-operation’ lesson where students share their ideas and thoughts about peace with other pupils from around the world, face-to-face, via Skype video. The use of Skype video enables young people of all nationalities to exchange real life experiences and debate ideas, providing a window into other cultures and broadening the depth of their world knowledge and understanding. This is just one of 13 lessons in the Resource; others include the ‘One Day One Goal’ lesson which allows students to explore the unifying influence of sports, ‘Uniting Nations’ where pupils learn about the role of the UN, and ‘Great Peacemakers Like You And Me’ which allows students to reflect on their personal peacemaking qualities and their own ability to make a difference.
Peace One Day is a global movement that annually calls for ceasefire and non-violence on 21 September, the UN International Day of Peace. The Resource includes a series of extended projects that are designed to culminate or commence on 21 September and are aimed at encouraging students to log their own Peace Day commitment.
“We hope that the Global Education Resource will inspire and empower educators and students to join us and take on the challenge of helping to establish Peace Day 21 September as an annual day of global ceasefire and nonviolence,” said Jeremy Gilley, the British documentary filmmaker and founder of Peace One Day. “Never before in our history has this sense of unity been more desperately needed, but never before have we had the technology at our disposal that can enable us to bring it about.”
Skype is Peace One Day’s global communications platform of choice. By working together as partners, each organization hopes to achieve their goals. Peace One Day’s goal is to introduce three billion people across the world to Peace Day by 21 September 2012: people who want to stand up for peace regardless of age, race, nationality, religion or gender. Skype’s goal is to remove barriers to how people in the world can communicate so they can easily develop real connections with one another, again, irrespective of age, race, nationality, religion or gender.
“We are pleased to be supporting Peace One Day in its mission to unite children from around the world and teach them about the value of peace and tolerance between nations,” said Josh Silverman, Skype’s CEO. “We want to encourage more schools to connect via Skype video and to help Peace One Day achieve its goal of the Global Education Resource being used in all 192 member states of the United Nations.”
The Global Education Resource can be accessed by registering via the Peace One Day Education page, which can be found at: www.peaceoneday.org/en/education
Note to editors
There are 13 short videos embedded in the resource, which include contributions from:
- Ban Ki-Moon, United Nations Secretary-General
- Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary-General 1997-2006
- Mary Robinson, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights 1997-2002
- Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate
About Peace One Day
Jeremy Gilley is an actor turned filmmaker, who in the late 1990s became preoccupied with questions about the fundamental nature of humanity and the issue of peace. He decided to explore these through the medium of film, and specifically, to create a documentary following his campaign to establish an annual day of ceasefire and non-violence. In 1999, Jeremy founded Peace One Day, a non-profit organisation, and in 2001 Peace One Day’s efforts were rewarded when the member states of the United Nations unanimously adopted the first ever day of global ceasefire and non-violence on 21 September annually – Peace Day.
In 2007, over 100 million people (source UN) were active on Peace Day, in 192 countries. There were life-saving initiatives in 14 countries and over 80 activities in Afghanistan alone, where Peace One Day was instrumental in securing the conditions in which safe polio vaccinations could take place; over three consecutive years (2007/8/9) a total of over 4 million children have been vaccinated against polio as a result of Peace Day agreements by all parties in the region.
Peace One Day is working to institutionalise Peace Day, making it a day that is self-sustaining, an annual day of global unity, a day of intercultural cooperation on a scale that humanity has never known. The next stepping stone on this journey is to reach 3 billion people with the message of Peace Day by September 2012; this will be achieved by working principally through Education, Sport, Music, Film and Digital Properties.
To find out how you can help, visit www.peaceoneday.org.
For interviews, images or any other information please contact Kayleigh Scott on +44 20 8334 9900 or email executiveassistant@peaceoneday.org.
About Skype
Skype is software that enables the world’s conversations. Millions of individuals and businesses use Skype to make free video and voice calls, send instant messages and share files with other Skype users. Everyday, people everywhere also use Skype to make low-cost calls to landlines and mobiles. Download Skype to your computer or mobile phone at skype.com.
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