PEACE TREE DAY
• JUNE 1st
To create a common festival where families and friends from all faiths and races can learn about and celebrate each other’s cultures, traditions and festivals together. The concept of Peace Tree Day is to educate, donate and celebrate diversity.
Grow or make your own Peace Tree and add a new symbol from a different culture each year. Visit http://www.peacetreeday.com/makeapeacetree.htm to learn how to make a Peace Tree. Everyone, especially children, will make a donation (a toy, clothes, food, etc.) to another child who is in need. Every year family and friends can choose a culture other than their own to learn about and celebrate. In addition to reading and listening to stories and music, families and friends can come together to enjoy a dinner from this culture.
Schools can teach children how they can make their own Peace Tree and Peace Tree decorations. Children can celebrate by wearing clothes from their culture or another culture and share music, dance, stories, art and food from their heritage. Teachers can organize workshops around the school where students are workshop leaders teaching other children how to apply mendhi, how to make sushi, how to do the salsa, how to make an origami paper crane etc.
The inauguration of Peace Tree Day will be on June 1, 2006 at Toronto City Hall. Children from 50 schools across the GTA will be invited to participate in the festivities.
Peace Tree Day will include:
At the Border…
Each year, the Peace Tree Committee will work on bringing together children from two countries that have had an ongoing history of conflict. The children will create peace symbols from their cultures and faiths and unite to create a Peace Tree together at the border and exchange symbols and gifts from their cultures. In our first year, we will work towards creating a Peace Tree at the border of Pakistan and India, an area that has been bridled in conflict since 1948. We hope that through this interaction, the children from both lands will begin to realize their similarities and celebrate their differences together. We hope that they will continue their friendship and realize the importance of respect and compassion for each other.
Peace Tree Committees
Babita Das (Teacher/Artist)
Surobh Sengupta (Superintendent of Schools)
Sandip Nowlakha (Entrepeneur/Philantrophist)
Dr. Bani Talapatra (Professor of Chemistry)
Tinku Das (Artist)
Mitra Sen (Teacher/Filmmaker)
Gary Bray (Principal, Toronto District School Board, TDSB)
Tova Fisch (Principal, TDSB)
Paula Fletcher (City Councillor, Toronto)
Manuela Godinho (Teacher, TDSB)
Andre Gravelijn (Teacher, TDSB)
Donna Guerra (Equity Officer, TDSB)
Jon Hagan (Teacher, TDSB)
Kathy Lazarovitz (ESL Instructional Leader, TDSB)
Suzanne McClennan (Teacher, TDSB)
Paula Markus (ESL Coordinator, TDSB)
Sanjukta Roy (Teacher TDSB)
Mitra Sen (Teacher, TDSB/Filmmaker)
Vivian Singh (Principal, Peel District School Board)