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Building a Culture of Peace for the Children of the World
"It is not the violence of a few that scares me.
It is the silence of the many. "
— Martin Luther King, Jr
Today, violence is in your backyard -- not something that happens far away. You, I, our children, could innocently be buying a pair of shoes in Sarojini Nagar, or eating jalebis dipped in milk beside the Ganges in Varanasi, when a neatly-placed device could blow up in our faces, destroying our families forever. The real enemy is not some misguided individual but the evil of rage, domination and greed lurking in us.
Yet we also know how to love, to nurture and coexist happily with other living beings, sharing our joys and sorrows with them. Each of us has a deep-seated desire for peace and survival. As Gandhi said, "As human beings our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world as in being able to remake ourselves."
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'Building a Culture of Peace for the Children of the World ' an exhibition to be held at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts, New Delhi from April 15 to 23,
2006, is not just a collection of panels, but an experience that leaves viewers confident that they can be protagonists in the drama of building a culture of peace.
Initially created by the Soka Gakkai International (SGI), a UN-recognised NGO with over 12 million members in 190 countries and territories, working for peace through culture and education, the exhibition is being brought to India at Delhi for the first time through the joint efforts of the Bharat Soka Gakkai, the Indian arm of the SGI, Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts, Indian Federation of UN Associations and United Nations Information Centre.
Other Events during the Exhibition: Venue - Seminar
Room, IGNCA
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15 April - Performance by MCD School Children (11 am - 1
pm) & (2pm - 5pm)
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16 April - Screening of Films by Bharat Soka Gakkai
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17 - 18 April - Screening of Films by IGNCA
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19 - 21 April - Screening of Films by Bharat Soka Gakkai
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22 April - Seminar (10:30 am - 1:30 pm)
All Films screening between (10 am - 2 pm)
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What causes violence? The first segment, Barriers to Peace shows how it is bred in the anger of poverty, how it arises from environmental destruction, and is spawned by greed -- the desire for territorial or economic dominance that powerful nations increasingly demonstrate. Prejudice -- the stereotyping of other societies -- makes it possible for us to attack or isolate them with impunity. Other barriers to peace are feelings of powerlessness, uncontrolled population growth, nuclear stockpiling upon which nations are now bent and the obsession with technological progress, in which human beings are often reduced to things.
Eight Action Areas, (identified by the United Nations for immediate attention) have been identified as a means to foster peace. The segment titled Religions and Peace highlights the common ground between religions by which their practitioners could begin a dialogue with each other. Another section, Children are the Future, aims to engage its youngest viewers with children's art and essays. In fact, the whole exhibition is graphically oriented, using bright colours and lively designs to attract, above all, young people.
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As Anwarul Chowdhury, UN Under-Secretary-General, said at the opening of this exhibition at the UN Headquarters in New York, "Tomorrow's world will be a better place if youth grow up internalizing a culture of peace." Yet another segment, Peace Builders, introduces 60 personages, eminent and less known, who have made outstanding contributions to peace.
When people view the callous or violent trends around them, they are often left with a feeling of powerlessness and helplessness. This exhibition aims to counteract that feeling, to make each viewer feel he can be a major player in the drama of building a culture of peace. It asks him provoking questions at each step about what he intends to go back and do – in his family and community. For as Dr Daisaku Ikeda, the President of the Soka Gakkai International says, "A great human revolution in just a single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a nation, and further, will enable a change in the destiny of all humankind."
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