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The warm weather is upon us, and happily things have slowed down to a more relaxing summer pace for the Peace Flag Project, which feels just right. On the other hand, summer is the busy season to prepare for our annual fall major event, the celebration of the UN International Day of Peace. This year we'll host our event on Sunday, September 19 at Burnside Park. (See more info below.) Please save the date.
This month we're reporting on our September Peace Art Exhibit, featuring the wonderful artist Mimi Sammis, a new Peace Garden at Sowams School, a fabulous peace program in RI called Raise Your Voice, and more.
I hope you will enjoy reading about all the great peace activities going on as you get ready for the slow and hopefully peaceful days of our new season.
Stay cool. Happy Birthday America! Happy July 4th!
In peace and gratitude, Ginny Fox |
 | Mimi Sammis, Featured Artist |
September Peace Art Exhibit --
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 Extraordinary sculptor/painter, Mimi Sammis, will be Featured Artist for our upcoming month-long Peace Art Exhibit this September at the URI Feinstein Providence Campus Urban Arts and Culture Gallery. We'll have many of her marvelous pieces on display. Peace and love are themes that run through all her work.
Sammis supports global work for peace with her exhibit entitled One Thousand Years of Peace, which was exhibited at the United Nations in 2001. Ms. Sammis also was commissioned to create a piece to honor Queen Elizabeth's II Golden Jubilee in 2002.
 A spiritual artist, Sammis says of her work: "I feel strongly that love is the healer of everything. When people come into contact with art, if love and joy are represented, the response and interaction with it can raise the consciousness of the world." We are very proud to have this remarkable artist as part of our September Peace Month.
Peace Art Exhibit - September 1 to 30, 2010
REMINDER: Contact from interested artists is required by July 15. Delivery of artwork for August 22. For additional information please contact Steven Pennell
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| Sowams Peace Garden |
Sowams Peace Garden
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 A lovely Peace Garden has been created by a group of students participating in a spring Enrichment Cluster at Sowams School in Barrington, RI. Ginny Fox and Kristin White, a parent at the school, organized the special class. Growing Peace. Eight students in Grades 1 to 3 reported on various important peace people, many of whom were Nobel Peace Prize winners; they also helped to design the Peace Garden and worked on the plantings. Enrichment Clusters are the brain child of Carroll Garland, who serves as an Enrichment Specialist at Sowams. This wonderful school has also celebrated the UN International Day of Peace. How lucky for these children to have such thoughtful and aware parents, faculty and administration. |
| Raise Your Voice |
Examining Culture, Clash, Community, and Change
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Two amazing Providence women, Risa Gilpin & Dorothy Bocian, have developed a multidisciplinary, community-based
 program called Raise Your Voice: Examining Culture, Clash, Community, and Change. It was sponsored in several RI schools this winter/ spring. The project used Kingian Nonviolence Principles andPractices as a springboard for students to write poetry, create songs, artwork, essays and resource materials gathered into artists books. Facilitators trained in nonviolence, teachers, students, visiting artists and academics engaged the students to help them find their own voices.
Rudy Cabrera at Shea High School | Participants listened to and worked with artists, storytellers, poets, and scholars to learn how many artistic ways there are to express oneself - and to invent new ones if necessary. The results were a rich outpouring of students' deepest feelings and
Poet Noami Shahib Nye and students | ideas expressed in their own unique ways. The other goal was to have the students learn about ways of using peaceful reconciliation in their own lives and in their own communities, skills which enable them to be engaged citizens and agents of change. For more information, see www.raiseyourvoice.org.
This ambitious and exciting and successful program was funded by the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities www.rifoundation.org |
| A Journey |
| Community Prep Peace Flags at Mt. Everest Base Camp | |  David Pinkham, a local Educational Consultant and photography buff, decided to challenge himself a few months ago by signing up for a three-week trek in Nepal. He joined a group trekking to the Mt. Everest Base Camp, the place that ambitious climbers rest for two months to prepare for their attempt on the world's tallest mountain. David had no such aspiration; he wanted a gentler contest with himself in the mountains at the top of the world - and he found even the trek to the 17,300 ft. Base Camp to be much harder than he'd imagined. To his credit, he struggled and prevailed.
On this journey with him was a set of Peace Flags created by 6th Grade students at Community Prep School in Providence. The flags hung at Base Camp for several days and were blessed by a local Buddhist monk. David came back to CP to tell his tale and return the flags to the students. What a special journey for loving and compassionate Peace Flags from Little Rhodie!
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| Michelle Obama's Campaign to Counter Child Obesity |
Chefs Move to Schools
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Michelle Obama has another new idea to help children learn more about food and develop better eating habits. In early June, she invited more than 500 chefs from all over the country to hear about her new program to pair chefs with schools in their communities. Providence's Matt Jennings (of Farmstead Cheese Shop and LaLaiterie Restaurant)  was one of the chefs in Washington to hear about the program first hand from the First Lady. Each chef will design his own program. Jennings plans to involve Farm Fresh RI to bring its Market Mobile Program of delivering local, fresh food to his designated school weekly. He also plans a hands-on program to involve parents, cooking demonstrations, and menu planning ideas.
"There are moments that you realize your profession is bigger than you. I feel blessed to be part of something this extraordinary." As the dad of 9-month old baby Sawyer, he has even more reason to think about how he can foster better eating habits for children.
Hats off to the First Lady for such an imaginative way to help  bring about meaningful social change. How clever to think of asking the chefs to help out!
From "First Lady's Seal of Approval, The Providence Journal, Lifebeat Section, June 16, 2010. |
| Volunteer Highlight |
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Nancy Doucette just finished her junior year at Johnson & Wales University, majoring in Travel-Tourism Management and Hotel Management. She is a tireless volunteer, helping out the PFP and lots of other organizations. She also served for a year as the Community Service Coordinator for two Honors societies on campus. Working with the Peace Flag Project has struck a chord with her, and she wants to work for a peaceful planet as well as many other goals.
Idealistic as well as hard working, Nancy has an ambitious
Nancy with Jane Goodall |
agenda for herself. Her most important objective is to find a wayto develop integrated, cooperative urban communities that are currently fractured and disconnected. In addition, her mission is to promote universal community involvement, to bring harmony to diverse cultures, to elevate the status of nonprofits - all that and more! As you can tell, we have been lucky to have this devoted peace woman as part of our work. |
| Save the Date |
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September
International Day of Peace
7th Annual Celebration : September 19. 2010
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