The International Day of Peace was established by the United Nations to be “devoted to commemorating
and strengthening the ideals of peace.” The first International Day of Peace
was observed on September 21, 1982. Until 2001, the International Day of Peace
was held on the 3rd Tuesday of September, and since 2001 has been
held on September 21st. Since
2011, each year’s International Day of Peace has had a theme. The theme for
2016 is “Building Blocks for Peace”.
The activities we did were inspired by the International Day of Peace Instant Meeting found on the Girl Guides of Canada website, however, we went with activities that we thought our girls would enjoy.
Things were a bit hectic as the girls were dropped off as we were short a Guider and had cookies to distribute at the same time.
One Guider organized an active game to keep the girls busy and then everyone was asked to add their ideas for different themes - Games, Neon Night, Crazy Night, and Technology Night. These themes came from the list of suggestions developed last week.
We then had our first attempt at forming a horseshoe and did quite well, especially as only 6 out of 16 girls had made a horseshoe before!
Our Peace-themed activities started with a quick discussion about the International Day of Peace and what the girls thought of when they thought about peace.
The first activity was to make individual peace poles. The Peace Pole project was started in Japan in 1955 by Masahisa Goi. A Peace Pole is a hand-crafted monument that displays the message "May Peace Prevail on Earth" on each side, usually in different languages. Peace Poles can be found in 180 countries around the world. Each girl painted a wooden garden stake to take home and display in a plant pot or garden.
After cleaning up from painting, we played a game to learn more about people working for peace. The girls were asked if they could think of anyone who worked for peace and then everyone was given a slip of paper with part of a description of a notable person who has worked for peace in a non-violent way. They had to find the other three people who had the rest of the description. Once everyone found their groups, they read out the information so we all learned a bit more about Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Golda Meir and Aung San Suu Kyi. This activity comes from the BC Instant Meeting - Give Peace a Chance.
We broke up the evening with a game, "Chicken in the Coop", explained and led by one of the Guides.
For our final activity, the girls broke up into groups to come up with skits about how they could work for peace at home, at school, or in the community.
We played a final game, followed by reminders for next week, and closed with Taps.
