"Peace on Earth", "Peace and Love", "Peace for all Mankind", "Peace in The Middle East", are mantra's you hear on a regular basis from politicians to activists to children, mothers and fathers living in these terribly afflicted war torn countries to regular normal people like you and I who are trying to make a small difference in the world, how on earth can a small group of people achieve something world leaders have not been able to manage in a hundred of my lifetimes?
That's the thought I had going into this seemingly impossible mission to bring Peace to the World, if you haven't heard our story yet here is my side.
Inspired by my amazingly passionate, crazy Italian friend, Chiara Maioni, who encouraged a group of us to watch a documentary by Jeremy Gilley, founder of Peace One Day, who struggled and finally achieved in getting the United Nations to sanction and recognize 21st September as International Peace and Cease Fire Day, we were shocked to realize that not one Arab country was a part of the 91 countries supporting this day, that day we decided to make it our mission to get the UAE, which many of us now call, home to become that 1st Arab country to support the cause and from that our small group Peace Day was born.
We had 10 weeks to put together an idea, an awareness campaign and a small but significant event on 21st September, the clock was against us but the idea was simple and perfect, produce a short series of films that shows the voice of the youth of the UAE on peace and war, build a print, TV, radio and online media awareness campaign, showcase the film in a cinema and get 10,000 signatures from the UAE nation backing our cause.
The dedication, commitment and fired up passion of this group of people I am proud to call my friends was unstoppable, we dug deep into our contacts, pulled favor after favor out of the bag, got the companies we all worked for supporting us and slowly but surely our small team became larger and larger with more and more people wanting to help, complete strangers dedicated their time and effort to help pull together our idea and bring it to a reality where on 21st September at 7pm I got to witness exactly what the people and more importantly the voice of the UAE thought about our campaign.
Standing in the lobby of Cinestar in Mall of The Emirates we had our candle of peace scroll where over the last few days thousands of people of all nationalities, young and old signed our scroll and left messages of Peace Love and Hope, many of them wanted to know how they can be of help in our future plans, it truly was awe inspiring.
In a world where sadly one of our 1st reactions when one see's someone in trouble or in need of help and support is to think that's none of my business and ignore it, a husband shouting at his wife in the street we cross the road to avoid them, we casually by pass the homeless guy who's got his hand out begging with our eye's averted from his, we will stand in the corner and do nothing while watching our school classmate getting bullied in the playground with the thought thank god its not me.
Many of us have that same thought when watching war and terror on our large flat screen TV's from the safety and comfort of our homes, thank god that's not me, but September the 21st showed me just how ignorant and cynical I had become of humankind as I was touched, amazed and humbled by the many people out there who do want to help, who do want to make a difference and I am not saying that we can achieve total Peace in my lifetime but I now know there are hundreds of thousands of people with me who are going to try damn hard and because of that I know we will bring peace to some at least.
Peace,
Zeffy
Zeffy Thompson is a member of the Peace Day UAE Committee.
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