SMYLES for PEACE
Supporting Multicultural Youth Leading Effective Solutions for PEACE

Project Description
The mission of this project is to bring SMYLES to the students of Brooklyn Junior High School in Brooklyn Park, MN by breaking the cycle of violence and eliminating racism and hate through learning peaceful alternatives to anger.

The primary goal of SMYLES for PEACE will be to Support Multicultural Youth Leading Effective Solutions for PEACE through implementation of a “PeaceJam” 12-week after-school curriculum led by youth.

Approximately 30 highly diverse 7-8th graders currently participate in an after-school club, with several multi-cultural 9th graders volunteering as leaders. Three of these 9th graders attended the 2008 PeaceJam International with Archbishop Desmond Tutu in April 2008 as well as PeaceJam Slam in October 2008 and have since expressed desire to implement a PeaceJam project to reduce violence in their school. The PeaceJam curriculum focus is on empowering youth to develop into leaders, to learn more about themselves and community, and to work on developing skills of peace building instead of negative, violence-related interactions.

Youth will develop and lead this project, with one or two adult coordinator(s) afterschool one day per week, March through May, 2009. The first four weeks will focus on defining their project and making a presentation of their plan during PeaceJam International to Nobel Laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel (March 28-29). The next four weeks will involve implementation of their plan to “break the cycle of violence and eliminate racism and hate through learning peaceful alternatives to anger”. Culmination of this phase of their project will occur at 3:00 p.m. on April 24, 2009 for Global Youth Service Day with a youth-developed and youth-presented project demonstrating the results of their PeaceJam efforts at Brooklyn Junior High School.

The last phase of their project will be to develop methods to 'keep it going' and create a slide show or video of the project for others to use in the future.

Location