An educational and artistic project promotes peace in over 1700 schools worldwide. Living Peace focuses on art and fraternity as tools for social transformation.

‘We believe in the need for an affirmation of the culture of peace,’ it says on the home page of Living Peace International website, ‘the only one that can respect and answer the truest and deepest questions of each and every one, in the impervious path towards universal fraternity.

Universal fraternity is the goal of the Living Peace International Project, which was launched in 2012 with the aim of promoting a culture of peace, fraternity and solidarity. It is a path of peace education based on the throwing of the ‘peace dice’ (on whose faces there are no numbers, but phrases that help to build peaceful relationships between everyone) and on the ‘Time out’, which includes, at 12 noon each day, a moment of silence, reflection or prayer for peace.

Living Peace aims to strengthen partnerships with many other people around the world, to build a ‘network’ of peace. To date, there are more than 80 international organisations in synergy with the project; more than 1,700 schools and groups participating and more than 1 million children, youth and adults reached by Living Peace initiatives in the 5 continents.

The Living Peace project uses educational and artistic activities to promote peace and social engagement and considers art as a tool for transformation. Art is one of its core elements.

Living Peace and the Peace Mandala

Art can transform reality and inspire change. It can create social impact and promote good. Small gestures, if done with intention, can trigger big transformations through art.

Living Peace knows this well, experiencing the power of art through the example of the Mandala of Peace: the Mandala of Peace to be donated to children’s hospitals, orphanages, nursing homes, centres for the elderly. To children, young people and adults in schools, associations and groups, with the aim of transmitting serenity and messages of peace.

It has been proven that painting mandalas is good for you: it relieves anxiety and worry, helps to manifest feelings and emotions, stimulates creative thinking and conflict resolution, and helps to improve teamwork and interpersonal relationships, overcoming differences and creating opportunities for encounters.

Other experiences that were created from the link between Living Peace and AFR.E.S.H

Among the collaborations of the Living Peace International Project, there is the one with AFR.E.S.H.: an initiative co-funded by the European Union, whose objective is to redefine the relationship between Europe and Africa in a horizontal perspective, on an equal footing, without any dominant actor, and no longer vertical, as it was according to the colonial historical framework.

For AFR.E.S.H it is necessary for Europe and Africa to work together to address the global challenges of the present and the future: migration, climate change, inequalities, conflicts. Hence, a strong focus on the concept of exchange and cultural collaboration between the two continents.

Among the experiences born in Africa from the relationship between AFR.E.S.H and Living Peace, we would like to point out a couple of very interesting ones: the first one was born from an initiative of Ricardo Mba F.Mu’Dzokou, who lives in Belgium and is a member of NHouvelle, but is originally from Douala, a town in South West Cameroon. Inspired by the training and exchange experience of AFR.E.S.H. (known during the 2023 Summer School online) and the educational activities of Living Peace and Up2Me, he involved some community leaders in a very poor region of Cameroon and promoted training sessions. Together they decided to found ‘AFR.E.S.H Cameroon’.

The second experience is that of Ernestine, a pedagogue from the Democratic Republic of Congo, who, inspired by AFR.E.S.H. activities, visits schools to implement activities based on the Living Peace approach.

Living Peace’s recent events

Some of the most recent events involving Living Peace International, which have just taken place or are about to take place, include the Peace Got Talent: the annual artistic event with music and dance through which young people from different countries of the world express their commitment to caring for the Planet and people.

There has also just been the Congress of Young Leaders and Ambassadors for Peace. It took place from 25 to 27 April in Portugal, thanks to the collaboration between Living Peace, AMU and Juventude Nova, with the logistical support of MilONGa. It was an event marked by exchange and sharing, with stories, projects and visions telling how local commitment can generate global change.

In the Ivory Coast they are organising a Peace march involving the local authorities.

The creative work, the constant commitment of the Living Peace International Project, is fully devoted to the values of peace, universal fraternity between peoples, the golden rule and a united world. It is important, then, for United World Project to highlight the valuable work of Living Peace precisely in the days of United World Week 2025.