2009 PeaceJam Conference - A HUGE Success!!

We had our 2009 Youth Conference on March 28th and 29th, and it was amazing!

The events started Friday night with an inspirational public talk with Nobel Peace Laureate Rigoberta Menchu Tum at The Rothko Chapel. People from all over Houston lined up hours in advance (in the rain) for the opportunity to hear this global peace leader speak. Afterwards, Ms. Menchu signed books and took pictures with the enthusiastic crowd.

Saturday and Sunday, Ms. Menchu spent time with 150 high school youth from around Texas on the University of Houton Campus. She worked with the youth on service projects and spread her message of "Ending Racism & Hate". These motivated young people were an inpiration to be around as they soaked in what she had to say, and walked away ready to carry the torch and become the next generation of leaders.

We are truly grateful to everyone who helped make the 2009 PeaceJam Youth Conference such memorable event! We can't wait for 2010!

View Pictures Here!!

2009 PeaceJam Youth Conference!

The 2009 Greater Texas PeaceJam Youth Conference will be here before we know it. It will take place on March 28th and 29th at the University of Houston.

The conference is a two-day event that will feature activities, workshops and projects centering around informing and educating approximately 250 youth on how they can get involved and advocate for the rights of all people, both local and global. In addition, the youth will get the rare, and life changing, opportunity to work alongside PeaceJam’s special guest, 1992 Nobel Peace Prize Winner Rigoberta Menchu Tum from Guatemala who has spent her life fighting for the rights of indigenous people. This PeaceJam event, themed “Ending Racism & Hate” should prove to be a momentous and unforgettable weekend for the youth involved.


Contact us (pjam@central.uh.edu) if you would like to take part in this great event and meet a Nobel Peace Prize Winner!

Protecting Wildlife

We recently ran across a website called Farmed and Dangerous. The site is dedicated to saving wild salmon, as well as other marine wildlife, in British Columbia that are being harmed and killed by salmon farms.

Currently, salmon farms are breeding grounds for sea lice, algae and various diseases, as well as polluting natural water sources with chemicals and waste that are harmful to wild salmon in the open ocean. In addition, the containment nets are the cause of hundreds of marine mammal drownings each year as they get entangled and stuck underwater.

We urge you to check out the Farmed and Dangerous website to find out how you can get involved and help stop the destruction of a valuable ecosystem.

Check out this inspirational video on YouTube to see for yourself.

Hip to Habitat

The Galveston Bay Foundation (GBF) is a champion of helping to restore the environment in and around Galveston. Headed by Della Barbato, their education programs focus on teaching youth about the marshlands of Galveston Bay and how they can help make changes to this important ecosystem.

The GBF's "Hip to Habitat" program was recently featured on Houston's local KPRC Going Green segment. In this video they feature 6th grade students in Friendswood who create their own marshes in kiddie pools with water that replicates that of the Galveston Bay waters. They grow smooth cordgrass in these pools at their school and, once matured, transplant the grasses to marsh areas in Galveston Bay. This is a great way to teach kids about what they can do for the environment and truly makes learning fun.

To find out more follow the links below.

www.click2houston.com/video/18190564/index.html (video)

kprc.envirocast.net/index.php?pagename=news_081117_gethiptohabitat (story)

If you are interested in getting involved with the Galveston Bay Foundation with your PeaceJam group for a Global Call to Action Project on the environment visit www.galvbay.org .

"Spreading" Peace

A cancer survivor in Maine, has taken "PeaceJam" to a whole new level. Cathy Roberts, a teacher who started Maine's first PeaceJam chapter, has been blueberry jam in her town of Montville, ME under the name "Spread Peace". She got the idea while she was undergoing cancer treatment last year. While selling her jams, and accompanying accessories, she is not only promoting peace, but "PeaceJam" as well. She is a true inspiration for her ability to turn tough times into good times and literally "spread peace".

Read more about Cathy and her "PeaceJam" here.

Friends Come In All Colors

We ran across a blog entry last week that comes out of Manitou High School in Manitou Springs, CO. As part of their PeaceJam Global Awareness Program, they will be marking students' hands this week with blue, red, purple, black and green marks, which links them together randomly. This encourages the students the interact with other students they normally wouldn't. As they put it, they are "encouraging students and staff to step out of their comfort zones all week." We think this is a great idea and really puts a spin on what PeaceJam is trying to teach youth. We encourage our readers to give this a try in their school, and make sure you let everyone know its for PeaceJam!

Satellites in the Quest for Peace

This was a very interesting article. We urge all of PeaceJammers to check it out!

Amnesty International and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) are collaborating on Eyes on Darfur (eyesondarfur.org), a Web site that shows before and after satellite images of areas the Washington-based human rights organization believes are, or could be at risk of, being under siege.

The purpose of this project is for the AAAS to go through archived images of the region and compare them to more recent images to produce clear examples of change in the landscape due to conflicts occurring there. AAAS searches areas based on reports to Amnesty International from the region.

AAAS also is monitoring other areas using satellite data. The organization monitors reports of ethnic cleansing in Burma and analyzed images after reports of intentional destruction of opposition party homes in Zimbabwe. In October, AAAS released results of its analysis of destruction caused in the August clash between Russian and Georgian troops in South Ossetia by satellite images taken before Aug. 10 and those taken again Aug. 19.

Check out the whole story here!

Plastic Bags and The Environment

The Pocono Record based in Stroudsburg, PA recently posted an eye-opening slide show about the detrimental affect of plastic bags on the environment. They recommend that if everyone got themselves a canvas bag or two, the savings to water, soil and wildlife could be enormous.

Greater Texas PeaceJam does its best to reduce its own usage of plastic bags, and we believe this is a very worthy movement. We urge you to check out the slides how here.

You can visit the Pocono Record for more information.

Go Canvas!!!