The Learning Teacher

How appropriate it is that this year the International Day of Peace should fall during the Muslim festive period - a  time when asking for forgiveness and apologising for wrongs is the practise.

A time for reconcilation and peace seems amicable to all. We could take this beyond all religions when all of us can gain from a world in peace.

Even as people seek reconciliation at a personal level, it is indeed important that we seek peace and reconciliation at the public sphere.   

Below is an extract from an article by Suhada  Elis  from The New Straits Times (18 Sept. 2009) on International Day of Peace and related activities in Malaysia. 

September 21 is International Day of Peace and some non-governmental bodies are celebrating it on a large scale.

CANDLE-LIGHTING for peace and a peace quiz are among the activities lined up by the Taiping Peace Initiative (TPI) for the day of peace on Monday.For the past nine years, TPI has been celebrating the event to promote a concept of “triple” peace — inner peace, social peace and earth peace — so the world would be a better place.This year, the event at the Taiping Sentral Mall is expected to pull in 20,000 people although it is the second day of Hari Raya Aidilfitri.
“We are confident that many people will turn up because besides the peace initiative, the event will have a festival-like atmosphere.“It will be an interesting day indeed,” said TPI co-founder and coordinator Beh Yang Toh. TPI is the brainchild of Taiping Tourist Association which partnered with Taiping Municipal Council, the United Nations and Universiti Sains Malaysia to build a foundation which supports world peace.The group, established in 2001, also promotes Taiping, which means “everlasting peace” in Chinese, as a peace centre.Beh said the celebrations this year would kick off with the “Seed of Change” exhibition, organised by the Soka Gakkai Malaysia, on earth preservation. He said a peace candle lighting would be held at the mall compound to deliver the message of peace to the public.“The crowd will also have a chance to participate in a peace quiz and watch cultural performances by teams from Germany and Belgium.“Before that, we will observe a moment of silence to pray for a better future for the country and the world.”

Great if we can make it to any of these events but more importantly, it will be good for us to spread the word about world peace. Teachers are in the best position to educate the young on this. It’s not too late to do it even after the Day when our students come back after the Raya break. The Internet could be a great source of information on the event. So here’s wishing all World Peace.  And as Eliot concluded in ’The Wasteland’ - Shanti Shanti Shanti.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 19th, 2009 at 11:57 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.