The International Day of Peace 2015

Dear kindness people,

  Most of us know a lot of trivia, dates and facts about war and conflict, but do we know the same about peace? Did you now that today is The International Day of Peace? Let me introduce you to some information about PEACE and International Day of Peace.

PEACE is recognized as both an innate state of Being, and a dynamic evolutionary process wherein constructive growth can occur and the children of this and future generations may gain hope for a better world to inherit. If you will try to look for some synonyms for this word, you will find lots of them: noun harmony, agreement; accord , friendship , love , reconciliation , truce , unity, amity, armistice, cessation , conciliation, concord,  neutrality , order , pacification , pacifism , treaty, unanimity, union. As much as synonyms, you can find lots of quotes about peace said by celebrities or written in books. Let me get you inspired by some of them:

 

1. “Make peace with silence, and remind yourself that it is in this space that you'll come to remember your spirit. When you're able to transcend an aversion to silence, you'll also transcend many other miseries. And it is in this silence that the remembrance of God will be activated.”

― Wayne W. Dyer

2. “The person who hurt you--who raped you or killed your family--is also here. If you are still angry at that person, if you haven't been able to forgive, you are chained to him. Everyone could feel the emotional truth of that: When someone offends you and you haven't let go, every time you see him, you grow breathless or your heart skips a beat. If the trauma was really severe, you dream of revenge. Above you, is the Mountain of Peace and Prosperity where we all want to go. But when you try to climb that hill, the person you haven't forgiven weighs you down. It's a personal choice whether or not to let go. No one can tell you how long to mourn a death or rage over a rape. But you can't move forward until you break that chain.”

― Leymah Gbowee, Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War

3. “What if guns shot clouds, rather than bullets? Then they’d not only be peaceful, but they’d be delayed water guns. Is there a Nobel Farm Prize?”

― Jarod Kintz, How to put out forest fires with your naked body

4. “Never give a person a piece of your mind when all you really wanted to do was give them a piece of your heart.”

― Shannon L. Alder

5. “It seems like the rebellions never stop, in the city, in the compound, anywhere. There are just breaths between them, and foolishly, we call those breaths “peace".”

― Veronica Roth, Allegiant

Now, if you already know enough about this tiny/immense word, let’s read some facts about The International Day of Peace:

1.  International Day of Peace seeks to promote peace among nations and peoples.  

2. It was established by the United Nations in 1981.

3.  Jeremy Gilley founded Peace One Day, a non-profit organisation in 2001.

4. Peace One Day’s efforts were rewarded when the member states of the United Nations unanimously adopted the first ever annual day of global ceasefire and non-violence on 21 September – Peace Day. The United Nations and associated agencies and staff have received the Nobel Peace Prize 10 times in the last 60 years.

5. In 2002, the United Nations declared it a permanent holiday.

6. The theme of the 2015 International Day of Peace is "Partnerships for Peace - Dignity for All".

If now you are motivated by this day, there are Top Events and Things to Do on International Day of Peace:

•                    Plant a peace tree.

•                    Light a candle at dusk in support of world peace.

•                    Practice peaceful resolution and problem solving skills in your daily interpersonal interactions.

•                    Attend a peace rally.

And finally, don’t forget:

I ♥ Being a Girl people, Alissa

Hey everyone,

my name is Alissa and I’m from Germany.

Since September 2015 I have joined I <3 being a Girl and I hope with our group we can inspire you and fascinate you about our themes.

For two years I have been studying social work. During my internship at pro familia, a non-governmental service and consumer organization for sexual and reproductive health and rights in Germany, I worked in the field of pregnancy counselling, which also includes counselling in conflict situations.

In this time I learned a lot about women/mother/family rights in Germany on the one hand and on the other hand I started thinking about the importance of sex education and the freedom of decision. Those topics were always important to me, especially in connection of the influence of media and religion in our society, but during my internship I had the chance to realise the reality of SRHR in Germany.

I got in contact with themes of SRHR and I started to reflect about the female role in society. This time strengthened my opinion that women and girls can decide how they want to live their life and that there still is a need of support.

So those are the reasons I’m writing here but now more about me :)

3 Things you enjoy doing?

mussels in Brussels

Traveling - I love to travel and getting around. Thereby you have the chance to get to know other cultures, other people, amazing landscapes and different food. Which leads me to my next thing I enjoy doing:

I like to try new dishes - Either I cook and try new recipes or I like to eat out at a restaurant.

Reading a good book or watching a good movie – For me “good” means that, afterwards, you start thinking about the story and meaning you saw/read. You are touched by the occurrence, the words and the people and it feels like it is real. Especially with a book you can understand a whole generation or historical facts if it is well written.

What makes you continue? Why are you still doing it?

Now, after half a year of internship, I noticed that I want to stay active in the fields of women rights. I had the chance to listen to many lectures and strong women and I could form my own opinion. I would like other women and girls to have the opportunity to form this too and thereby they can decide on their own, how they want to live.

The world would be a better place if everybody would:

 

Listen to the story of a person.

 

Watch “The Hours”: The movie is about three women, living in different generations, interconnected by the novel “Mrs Dalloway” by Virginia Woolf

Read “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee. An amazing novel about childhood, racism and inequality.

Try regularly something new to broaden one’s horizon.

Future: before you're 80, you'd like to...

See all the countries of the world. Ok that’s a lot but there are quite a few places I’d like to visit. For example Corvo, an small island of the Azores archipelago.

Next to my travel plans I hope I can say that my work as a social worker had an impact on other people and decision makers. Maybe it was my little input to make the world a better place by helping people and by pointing out that special groups have a need for help and therefore they need other options in their lives. These options require to be enabled or we should support these groups to help themselves.

I ♥ Being a Girl people, Julita

Dears!

I am Julita and I am from Lithuania. 

At this moment I am medical student, but my story started in the school when l realised that I really care about peoples. That’s the reason why l decided to join Medical student association of Lithuania, where I was participating in some projects such as ‘Prevention of breast cancer’, ‘Prevention of testicles cancer’, educational programme about healthy diet for pupils, free testing for HIV on AIDS day. Than I realised that there are lots of things that needs to be improved or changed on sexual health because of stereotypes and stigmas, especially for youth. And that’s how I found Family planning and sexual health association of Lithuania year ago. It is said, that life isn’t about finding yourself, life is about creating yourself. And l really enjoying that myself, who I am during activities in this association. Here I understood what SRHR really means for the first time, what it is to advocate and to fight for the better place to live. After getting lots of new and useful information, some local projects, I started to led a lessons of sexual education in the schools. And these lessons (or the time with youth, their private questions and lots of good words and thanksgiving after lessons, request to come back here with more information) really turned me on and I wanted to do even more. I became ASTRA Youth member; on July I were attending advocacy and communication training of YSAFE, after which I decided to join it and of course to become a part of wonderful I <3 being a girl working group. I hope, that before I am 80 years old lady, I won’t become that person who is angry at all the world, at all systems, but still doing it in silent near the TV and doing nothing to change it. I hope, that the world after me will be a better place to live, without any discrimination, any violence. 

Despite these activities, l also enjoying my free time : I am crazy about coffee times (when I can have a peaceful time with my minds or my wonderful friends to get ready for activities of day), time in nature ( because I can forget about stress and have some relax and thoughts that we are here just for a little time so there are no reason to have a war, violence or discrimination), reading books (to create my personality!) and of course, I <3 being a girl! 

I really believe that everyone is a kind person in a heart. And there are some things, that really can help you to get inspired to believe, that you are the best. You must:

1. See the movie ‘My name is Khan’.

 If you already saw it, you should look at the sky in the dark night and catch the falling star to make a wish ‘No discrimination’.

2. Read Victor Hugo ‘Notre-Dame de Paris’. If you think that you should change it to better end, please, just do it! Just use your imagination, always read your kindness minds!

3. Listen to the song ‘Christophe Willem - Someone New’.

After preparing yourself for good emotions, everyone should listen for whisper to their ear ‘I love you’.

4. If still you didn’t get inspired and you are sad about injustice, please, just TRY to by some new shoes!

At the end, l want to remember for everyone, that everything, what you think of yourself is much more important than what people think of you. Just don’t be afraid to be more crazier than everyone else, take a risk and do it ! <3

How to define beauty?

If we will search a definition of Beauty, we will find that it ‘is the quality of being pleasing, especially to look at, or someone or something that gives great pleasure, especially when looking at it.’ And Girls, did you know that only 2 percent of women would describe themselves as beautiful? Are you in that small sampling? The Dove Campaign asked women and found that:

• Seventy-seven percent strongly agree that beauty can be achieved through attitude, spirit, and other attributes that have nothing to do with physical appearance.
• Eighty-nine percent strongly agree that a woman can be beautiful at any age.
• Eighty-five percent state that every woman has something about her that is beautiful.

Interestingly, the study found that two-thirds of women strongly agree that physical attractiveness is about how one looks, whereas beauty includes much more of who a person is.

Anyway, if you don’t like something in your appearance, you can change it just by using some make-up, but you can’t change yours inside beauty so quickly!

Let me introduce with some of history facts related with beauty tricks!

1. You are not enjoying being in the sun? But still you are doing that because EVERYONE has a tan?! Don’t worry about it anymore. Probably you are a ‘blue blood’ girl. During the human history there was a period that people believed in pale skin as in wealthy elite person. People tried to be so pale that you could see the blue blood veins on their face. If they still had to work outside and got some tan, they just tried to pale themselves by using poisonous titanium paint and colour dye to paint the blue veins.

2.  In order to get the femme fatales and ingenues of the early silent screen to not look washed out under the lights and cameras, people started exaggerating their eyes and lips with make-up. And the rest of America followed suit. Hollywood make-up guru Max Factor turned his work on the set into a massive industry. So the father of make-up – Max Factor!

3. Red lipstick is on a top again? Why not?! Even nurses in World War 2 were made to wear red lipstick, to remind them that they are females before soldiers, and to CALM DOWN male casualties. Although it's since been proven that red lipstick might have the opposite effect.

4. Do you know what is the story of eyebrows fashion?!  A new eyebrow era also started during early films in America. Before, eyebrows had usually been left to the forces of nature. But the straight thin eyebrows of "It" girl, Clara Bow launched brows into the fashion mainstream of the 20th century as flapper chic. Anyway, we are lucky now: we can choose the best style for it by ourselves and we have a big variety of opportunities that also will look pretty.

We are beautiful as we are. Don’t think about negative things in you, just enjoy the life and be a little bit of crazy to reach a fullness of life. To get some inspiration, just watch a video here and let’s start to love ourselves as we are!