Where do most great ideas come from? They come from the minds of ordinary people like you who decide that they want to see some great changes happen. Imagine every individual in the world celebrating peace on the same day, a day of global unity. Ideas as vast as this seem almost unimaginable at first. If an idea is powerful enough, others start to believe in it; then it spreads and becomes real. Read more below about Jeremy and Peace One Day’s journey, and then think about what ideas you might have for Peace Day.
In September, 1999, a young British filmmaker named Jeremy Gilley launched the film project Peace One Day.
This was the beginning of an experiment to find out whether he could persuade the governments of our world to create the first-ever global ceasefire/nonviolence day with a fixed calendar date – Peace Day.
As a filmmaker he would document the entire process, and for the next two years he traveled
the world to build the case for creating such a day.
Meetings were held with global figures such as then United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and His Holiness the Dalai Lama, as well as individuals whose lives had been profoundly affected by violent conflict. On September 7, 2001, Jeremy achieved his goal.
The original UN International Day of Peace was created by Costa Rica in 1981; however, the date of the Day moved from year to year and no one was being asked to stop fighting...
So, in September 2001, Jeremy and a group of friends achieved the first stage of their goal at the UN General Assembly in New York by giving the International Day of Peace a fixed date and making it a day of global ceasefire and nonviolence.
Individuals can achieve great things, and Jeremy‘s idea had been accepted by all the countries that made up the United Nations (189 at that time).
They adopted a Resolution, a document that asks every individual on earth to observe and commemorate one day of peace every year. The date chosen was…
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66 Resource A1 – One Person, One Powerful Idea. Sheet 1.
One Person Where It All Began
One Powerful Idea
The History of Peace Day
21 September—Peace Day
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