Global Peace Festival and Convention 2010 Announced in Nairobi, Kenya

Kenyan President Kibaki holds talks with Global Peace Foundation Chairman

Kenya has won the bid to host the 2010 Global Peace Festival and Convention, to be held in Nairobi on November 17-20. International peacemakers including religious, NGO, youth, business, governmental, and other civil society leaders will participate in the Convention on the foundation of regional Global Peace Festivals (GPF) to be convened in Asia, the Americas and Africa.

The announcement was made on February 16 in Nairobi with the strong endorsement of President Hon. Mwai Kibaki in a meeting with Global Peace Festival Foundation Chairman Dr. Hyun Jin Moon and distinguished national host committee members.

Organizers made this announcement from Harambee House, the Office of the President of the Republic of Kenya; Dr. Moon was joined by Dr. Manu Chandaria, Founding Chairman of Kenya Private Sector Alliance, Anglican Church of Kenya Archbishop Eliud Wabukala, Minister of Youth and Sports Hon. Hellen Sambili and Mr.Vincent Rapando of GPF Kenya.

President Kibaki expressed keen interest in the Global Peace Convention (GPC) and Festival and endorsed the convening of a broad national working group to support the initiative. The Presidential meeting was reported several times on national television. The 2010 Global Peace Festival in Africa will be held in conjunction with the Global Peace Convention. Kenya’s Prime Minister, Hon. Raila Odinga, has been a consistent supporter of the GPF, and was the distinguished guest speaker at the first Kenya GPF in August 2008.

The whole report with photos of Rift Valley projects and a separate report on the GPF chair’s meeting with President Kabaki is posted on the Global Peace Service Alliance web site.

New Urban “Gardening in a Sack” Provides Food for Nairobi’s Poor

Other news from Kenya: Enterprising “self-help” female farmers in Nairobi’s sprawling Kibera slum are growing food for their families and selling the surplus to their neighbors through an innovative approach to urban agriculture. The International Committee of the Red Cross recognized the technique as a solution to food security in urban areas during the 2007 and 2008 political crisis in the slums of Nairobi. The story with a lot of photos is published on AllAfrica.com

Influential Evangelicals Call for Cancellation of Haiti’s Debt

The ruins of the Cathedral in Port-au-Prince, Haiti (UN Photo/Marco Dormino)

Prominent US Christians are calling on governments and international lending bodies to cancel the Haitian government’s foreign debt. In a statement released by the recently formed New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, more than 60 prominent Christian leaders called upon “all nations and institutions that have made loans to the Haitian government to quickly and completely forgive these debts.”  Press release

You can find the latest updates on the Service For Peace response to the Haiti Earthquake here.

More Haiti Relief Updates from Service For Peace

As an immediate response, SFP members in Santo Domingo and Miami are currently organizing donations of food, clothing and medicine. The contact person in Santo Domingo is Melidad Polanco, mpolanco @ servicioparalapaz.org, 809.919.2657. In Miami, SFP is working in partnership with Miami Dade College North Campus. The contact person is Harold Silva, hsilva @ mdc.edu, 305.237.8380. The drop-off sites have not yet been decided.

American Airlines is flying Doctors and Nurses into Haiti for free. For more information, please call: 212.697.9767

We will soon be sending a team to Haiti to see where and how we can be most effective. An SFP team is scheduled to be working in Jacmel in March and their efforts will be directed toward disaster relief. If you would like to support SFP’s effplease click here to make a donation.

Promising New Glass ‘Sponge’ May Remove Toxic Contaminants from Water

A new material developed by Dr. Paul Edmiston of the College of Wooster in Ohio offers an innovative way to remove toxic contaminants from ground water. The material, called Obsorb,  is a reactive glass that swells like a sponge.  Like conventional glass, it does not absorb water, yet unlike conventional glass, it can bond with other chemicals it encounters.  The new glass can unfold to hold up to eight times its weight and readily binds with gasoline and other volatile organic  pollutants, so it acts like a “smart” sponge, capable of cleansing contaminated groundwater.

You can learn more about this technology in Wooster magazine (Summer 2009)

Survival of the ‘kindest”

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, are challenging long-held beliefs that human beings are wired to be selfish. In a wide range of studies, social scientists are amassing a growing body of evidence to show we are evolving to become more compassionate and collaborative in our quest to survive and thrive.

In contrast to “every man for himself” interpretations of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, Dacher Keltner, a UC Berkeley psychologist and author of “Born to be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life,” and his fellow social scientists are building the case that humans are successful as a species precisely because of our nurturing, altruistic and compassionate traits.

Usher Raymond IV’s Non-Profit Organization, Usher’s New Look, Takes Powered By Service Initiative to the International Stage at the Global Peace Convention

Grammy Award Winner and Humanitarian Usher Raymond IV brought Powered By Service, an initiative from his non-profit  Usher’s New Look, to the Global Peace Convention in the Philippines from December 10-14, 2009. Powered by Service was launched at the Clinton Global Initiative in September 2009,  and works in partnership with the United Nations Foundation to tackle critical issues facing the world including malaria prevention.

Shawn H. Wilson, President of Usher’s New Look and James Harris, newly appointed youth member of the Board of Directors launched Powered By Service on an international stage at the convention.

“Usher’s New Look is excited to expand Powered By Service and learn best practices from global decision makers and youth leaders,” Wilson said.

“Usher’s New Look understands that service is a simple and selfless act which benefits others and enables people to connect despite their differences,” said David Caprara, Director of Global Peace Service Alliance. “The GPSA Alliance is honored to help expand the pathbreaking success of UNL’s Powered by Service by partnering with grassroots youth service initiatives in Kenya, the Philippines, US and other nations working multilaterally.”

“The Global Peace Convention is Powered By Service- it’s a gathering of like-minded people that are dedicated to tackling critical issues worldwide,” said Usher Raymond IV.

Global Peace Convention Sends Delegation to Mindanao

More than 200 delegates from around the world attending the Global Peace Convention in Manila visited the conflict-affected areas in Mindanao Monday on a fact-finding tour.

Paul Murray, spokesperson of the Global Peace Convention, said the group would visit Lanao del Norte where international peace advocates would see for themselves the situation in that region.

“Whenever there is conflict, what we usually do is we look at the community level and we don’t focus much on the conflict, may it be political or religious,” Murray told the Manila Bulletin. “Our goal is really to engage the communities to talk to the government and find solutions.”