Young People
Peace Child provides inspirational, life-changing experiences for young people. Read the Blogs of some of them; check out the Short Bios of others.
All our books, teaching programmes and musical plays are co-created by youth with light touch help from elders. Many groups try to do this – but the Peace Child way works because, as one of its founders, David Woollcombe, says: “We place insane amounts of responsibility on young people, and only very, very rarely do they let us down.” In every project that we do, if there is a disagreement between a youth and elder over anything, the youth is allowed to try his or her way first. Only if it fails, do we explore the elder’s way. Similarly, in meetings where elders and youth are present, we always encourage the youth to spend time alone – so that the elders, equally, can have time alone to discuss the challenges being explored. Almost every time we’ve done this, we find the report-back from young people more useful and constructive than that of the elders.
There is, however, an important requirement summed up in our catch-phrase: “FIRST INFORM YOURSELF, THEN TAKE ACTION!” Peace Child is for any and every youth, of all backgrounds, cultures, nationalities, ethnicities and grade levels, but we do require that all of them know what they’re talking about before they take action. This is why most of our Peace Child musical scripts are supported by Study Guides. Our Books are also a great source of accessible information – written and illustrated by youth for youth. Like you! If you want to delve deeper, read the background information for the UN Centenary Peace Child, or the Background reading for the Model Citizens’ Assemblies. Better still, decide which specific theme you want your Peace Child Event to explore, then prepare a detailed programme of research for you, your friends, teachers, parents, and any others you wish to involve to do before you meet, or start your first rehearsal.
Remember: the most important thing about Peace Child is that everything we do is fun! If anything becomes boring to you as a young person, move on: get to the interesting bits. That is not to say that doing Peace Child is not Hard Work – it definitely is! And some of the information you turn up will be scary and depressing. But that is your point of departure. Every Peace Child project has a happy ending baked in. Your job is to figure out how you get there. And that, we promise, will be life-changing! And FUN!