Peace Week is a national week designed especially to help schools educate students about peace issues. Peace education is about helping students to understand and manage conflict in their own lives and from a greater perspective learning how peace is fostered both nationally and internationally.

Peace Week is The Peace Foundations contribution to the UN Decade for Peace and Non-violence for Children. The UNESCO manifesto focused on the following six strands to be used as the basis for peace activities:

- Respect all life
- Reject violence
- Share with others
- Listen to understand
- Preserve the planet
- Rediscover solidarity

 

Schools' Peace Week 2006


Schools Peace Week was on this year from the 6-12th of August this year.
As in other years we had students from all over the country participating
and educating young people on the importance of peace. This year we also ran
a special art competition on what it meant to students that New Zealand was
nuclear-free.  The Kelliher Trust had kindly donated $2000 as prize money
for this competition.

There were a high calibre of entries from students as young as five years up to
eighteen years of age and it is really inspiring to see what it means to young
people to be a part of a nuclear free county.

First place went to Davina Shaio (18) from Mt Roskill Grammar in Auckland,
2nd place to Alexander Hunt (6) from St Brigids School in Wellington, and
3rd equal place went to Nancy Jiang (15) from Rutherford College in Auckland
and Elyse Harpur (17) from Avonside Girls High School in Christchurch.

And 5 students were 'highly commended'-Georgina Brook (Solway College, Masterton), Solomon Baldock (Macandrew Bay School, Dunedin), Ella Flavell (Ngaio School, Wellington), Michelle Smits (Tawa College, Wellington) and Elaine Speden (Oamaru Intermediate).

All of the entrants will be displayed in a special exhibition in June next
year to commemorate the 20th Anniversary of New Zealand being nuclear-free.
We would like to appreciate all of the students who participated in this
competition and especially acknowledge their teachers for their continued
support of Peace Week.

Young people are the future and by educating them on peace issues they can
make a real difference in creating a more peaceful world!

Schools' Peace Week 2005
6-12 August

Schools’ Peace Week was a fantastic success this year, with a large number of schools getting involved and educating students on peace issues! A predominant focus for many schools this year was the story of ‘Sadako and the thousand paper cranes’ which was used to highlight issues surrounding the 60th Anniversaries of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A notable example is students from Bream Bay College in Ruakaka who made over 1300 paper cranes which were taken to Hiroshima. Other schools used art as a means of students express what peace meant to them, such as St Mary’s school in Gisborne who created a beautiful peace mural which they displayed in front of their school.

      

Our competition received a high calibre of entrants with 1st prize going to Karaka School in Papakura. Their senior school embraced peace week by studying the bombings of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Rainbow Warrior, and also created posters and clay pots displaying their feelings on world peace. 2nd prize winners were Pukeoware School in Waiuku whose senior students undertook a major project of designing and building a peace garden comprising mosaic panels and a friendship seat. 3rd prize went to Kaka St Special School in Tauranga who explored what peace meant to their students and incorporated aspects throughout their lessons in the form of stories, peace posters and paper cranes.

  

We would like to thank all those schools that participated this year and look forward to your continued support next year!

 

Schools' Peace Week 2004

Taipa School in Northland borrowed a crane to take a photo of their amazing people – peace sign!

Putumahoe School (1 st prize winners) is on the “right track” building a peace pathway in their school!

Favona School gathered together and made a “giant peace circle” – 400 of them, sang peace songs and did activities that promote a ‘peaceful world'.

There were many others including Owhiro Bay School ( 2 nd Prize Winners), who had a guest speaker from UNICEF, opened a Peace Garden and organised for their peer mediators to give out peacemaker awards at assembly. Mana and Tawa Colleges performed a Hiroshima musical in front of parliament and even got featured on National Radio. St. Mary's School (3 rd Prize Winners) promoted peace throughout the whole school by creating a peace book and involved parents as well.

Well done all of you and keep up the great work - remember the youth of today are the future - they have the power to build a better tomorrow!

Schools' Peace Week 2003

Some of activities that the schools organised are featured below:

St. Patrick's School in Kaiapoi wrote peace poems (below), stories, studied Hiroshima and made 1000, yes you read it right, 1000 peace cranes. What's even better they all co-operated and helped each other and the year 8 class taught the rest of the school how to make the peace cranes.

 

Peace

Peace is like a dove flying high in the sky.

A red poppy growing in a field.

Like a calm lake with floating swans.

Like the peacefulness of a butterfly.

Like the tranquility of laying in a field surrounded with daffodils.

Like watching the setting sun on a beach.

The smile of a new born baby.

Like the feeling of a warm fuzzy hug from a very special someone.

That is peace.

  By Chelsey Eddy, Year 7

 

Hora Hora Primary School from Cambridge was another school that participated and placed an enormous effort in organising activities for peace week. They were also very fortunate to have a Japanese teacher who helped them organise the events and teach them about Hiroshima and Nagasaki .

They read stories and articles, wrote poems and made a peace poster.

St John Bosco School made peace cranes with messages such as peace and hope and friendliness and friendship . They also painted greetings in different languages encouraging peaceful relationships between cultural groups. Some students made up a dance and wrote prayers to communicate the idea of peace, which they performed before the school. The school was also featured on the front page of New Plymouth's Daily News.

There were also some secondary schools involved in Peace Week including Pukekohe High School who did a tremendous job and involved the whole community. First, they made 1000 paper cranes and sent them to the Hiroshima Peace Park . But they did not stop there! They used the other peace cranes they made to decorate classrooms and exhibits and encouraged the wearing of peace cranes during peace week.

They also had a peace poster competition and displayed the posters around school and in the windows/displays of local businesses. These businesses sponsored prizes for the poster competition.

 

Now for the prizes …

It was very difficult to choose from all the schools that we received feedback from simply because they all did such a good job and placed so much effort into organising all the activities around the week.

Finally, we had to make a choice! So ..… (drum roll) …… and the winners are:

First prize: $100 dollars worth of The Peace Foundation's resources goes to:

Hora Hora Primary School Cambridge

 

Second prize: One-year school membership with The Peace Foundation value of $65.00 goes to:

Pukekohe High School

 

Third prize: The Peace Foundation's posters value of $30.00 goes to:

St. Patrick's School, Kaiapoi

 

Well done to all the schools that took part. We hope that you all had fun during the week learning about peace and we do hope that we'll continue to ‘peace' it together!!

Keep up the great work and we will catch up with you all next year for Schools' Peace Week 2004!

Best wishes for happy, peaceful and safe holidays to you all.