CHARLESTON PEACE ONE DAY

 Hosts

PEACE HAPPENS

PEACE WEEK 2013-September 16th-22st

(See "Week of Peace," Tab)

 Joshua Project

Charleston Peace One Day, along with CofC Sociology of Peace students, will be joining with the Joshua Project for Charleston Farm's Community Revitalization Project.  

We will be bringing forms of Peace-Building, Non-violent Communication/Conflict Resolution skills to young teens that have hit some roadblocks, and need new fresh options. It will be a team/partnership project involving young people/ families from the community, a local church, CofC/Citadel students,and CP1D. 

The Meet/Greet Charleston Farms Community Oyster Roast held April 2nd was a huge success...as the neighborhood poured out of their homes to enjoy good food/music and meeting new friends.  This will be our kickoff for this upcoming fall.  Charleston Peace One Day will be busy writing curriculum this summer .... will keep you posted.  

Charleston Peace One Day Festival

Poster by JFletcher Designs

The Charleston Peace One Day citywide festival offered all organizations and citizens the opportunity to come together in an effort to support and respect each other and promote intercultural cooperation. The festival  was used to promote organizations and individuals working toward non-violence, sustainability, intercultural cooperation, and peace in the Charleston area in a setting that included education, art, music, and participation. All business, religious, and non-profit organizations as well as individual citizens were invited to join in a celebration of peace, helping Charleston join in peace day initiatives that were happening all over the world. The event highlighted the initiatives that are going on year round in our community and the world as well as provide education and entertainment for the community.

The 3rd annual Charleston Peace One Day citywide festival was held on September 19, 2010 at the North Charleston Riverfront Park.  The event included a live music stage, Visual Art Show Tent, business, food, merchandise, and non-profit vendors, interactive dialogue tent with community leaders on subjects such as religion, environmental sustainability, and conflict resolution,  and a Kid's Global Village where kids participated in peace building educational activities. In 2008 and 2009 the Charleston Peace One Day was held at Brittlebank Park in the city of Charleston.  You will now see a peace pole there to honor ideas of peace, with the words "May Peace Prevail On Earth," in four languages.  In 2010, the festival was held at the beautiful Riverfront Park in North Charleston.  

The 4th annual Charleston Peace One Day reached further than a festival by hosting the PEACE HAPPENS Campaign with a goal is reach the entire state of South Carolina with Peace Week awareness and activities. 

For the 2012, we will host another PEACE HAPPENS Campaign during the week of September 16-23rd!!

  See the Peace Week Tab for more details. 

*Many ask: will the festival return, "we hope to make the festival an every other year event." 

EDUCATION PROGRAMS

As an full-time adjunct sociology instructor at the College of Charleston, Reba Parker was asked to create and teach a Sociology of Peace class in the Spring of 2009. This class was developed to center around positive peace and teaches students that peace is measurable, tangible, and actually possible by highlighting peace-building initiatives taking place all over the world.

Teaming up with CP1D education development we have now created a training program that teaches these students how to develop and create education programs of their own in the outside communities. Each student is required to implement an education program taking Peace and Conflict Resolution Education to elementary, middle, and high school classes, as well as some adult programs throughout the city. By the end of 2010, we will have completed 9 Sociology of Peace classes with over 250 students completing more than 45 Peace and Conflict Resolution Education Programs in our community.

CP1D's goal is to create a full peace and non-violent education curriculum and resource set for educators in our community to become equipped with the necessary tools to integrate peace and conflict resolution into their everyday classroom routine. As we work to create this curriculum we continue to use our website as a resource tool for educators to reference and receive ideas about teaching peace in their schools.  Be sure and check out the excellent peace-building curriculum by Peace One Day at www.peaceoneday.org.  


Make A Commitment Campaign

(pictured Rev. Joe Darby, Morris Brown A.M.E. Church, Charleston, S.C.)

Charleston Peace One Day received a grant from the cities’ Cultural Affairs Arts Department to team up with WALK Gallery for the 2010 “Make a Commitment” Campaign. The campaign is a Contemporary Public Art Show that displays photography in the vacant storefronts throughout downtown Charleston, on King Street. In this way, Charleston Peace One Day and WALK Gallery have set the intention of creating a community dialogue and encourage a connection and interaction between those who live, work and visit the neighborhoods where empty becomes full, and “vacant” no longer has a negative connotation. Charleston Peace One Day’s mission is to develop a culture of peace, intercultural cooperation, and non-violence through education, action, art, and other community building efforts. The goal of CP1D’s “Make a Commitment” public visual art show will be to help create a culture of peace for our community through creating an awareness of peace through the medium of visual arts. This show will feature 10 large portraits of key community leaders/young people making a one-line commitment to building peace, non-violence, and intercultural cooperation. The objective of this show is for citizens to visualize and identify with people they recognize from their community who are making tangible commitments to peace , which in turn will challenge others to make their own personal commitments. We hope that it will connects the dots between peace and everyday actions. In doing so it will help to redefine what “peace” means and how each one of us can make a difference. What is your commitment to peace? What will you DO.




Martin Luther King CSO Gospel Choir Event

poster by Jfletcher Designs

Charleston Peace One Day partnered with the Charleston Symphony Orchestra and CSO Gospel choir to commemorate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King at the Gaillard Auditorium in downtown Charleston. We hope to continue this relationship as CP1D seeks to spread the very message of MLK, of working toward a community that sees the dignity in every human being.

Dining For A Difference

Our Dining With a Difference meets CP1D's mission of intercultural cooperation and highlighting organizations that work for peace, justice and/or sustainability. We all know of the catastrophic earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12th, leaving the country in ruins and leading to over 200,000 deaths, with millions displaced and injured. Charleston Peace One Day worked to highlight local non-profit, Portlight Strategies‘ day in and day out work to get aid into areas of Haiti devastated by the earthquake and aftershocks, by organizing the Dining for a Difference: Haiti Food Voyage Fundraiser. Since the earthquake, Portlight Strategies has been successful in getting aid into the areas Quisqueya, south into Leogane and Dufort, and the areas around Jacmel. They have set up hospitals with doctors and nurses at the University of Quisqueya, shelters, shipped 10 cartons of medical supplies, which were distributed to orphanages and those left disabled by the earthquake. Now, they have teamed up with a ship out of Miami, “The Liberty Schooner,” in order to ship 10,000 pounds of rice, which will be able to feed over 40,000 people in these areas.

Until now, Portlight’s efforts have gone unnoticed in the Charleston area, because they spent most of their time focusing on using existing funds and resources to set up aid in Haiti as quickly as possible. Now, The Haiti Food Voyage cannot be completed until the money is raised to cover the cost. Charleston Peace One Day stepped in to ask our community to help support this local organization’s efforts to bring aid and peace into this area in need. The ability to help was simple, we asked Charleston citizens to participate in the Dining for a Difference Fundraiser by either hosting or attending a dinner party with friends, family, co-workers, etc. Café Kronic of James Island generously donated coupons to everyone who made a donation. Charleston Peace One Day delivered packets with information on how to host a party, invited friends to come, and asked the folks attending to make a donation for the amount they would pay for the dinner, or an even larger amount.

Our goal was to have at least 20 parties taking place around the low-country during the week of March 21-28th. We collected enough funds to send the Liberty schooner on its way. Friends were made, a good time was had by all, and we meet a very important need in a country far way.



Pieces for Peace Art Auction


poster by Christina Bailey
CHARLESTON PEACE ONE DAY RAISES MONEY FOR COMMUNITY EVENTS AND PROMOTES LOCAL ARTIST THROUGH “PIECES FOR PEACE” SILENT AUCTION FUNDRAISER. Every spring Charleston Peace One Day works to promote local art and artist through the annual “Pieces for Peace” Silent Auction Fundraiser at Circular Church’s historical Lance Hall.

The Charleston Peace One Day “Pieces for Peace” art auction gives artists and citizens the opportunity to come together in an effort to support and respect each other and promote intercultural cooperation. Art has the ability to show the beauty of culture in a way that nothing else can. The goal of the auction is to raise money to create more opportunities for Charleston Peace One Day to work in the community by showcasing the beauty and respect for culture that art creates. All profits will be used to help Charleston Peace One Day’s mission to better our communities through creating peace-building, non-violent, and conflict resolution education curriculum and programs for upcoming Peace One Day Festival.

> P.R.I.D.E (People Responsible For the Environment) Project

(pictured, Mr. & Mrs. Thomas, Mayor Joe Riley, founder Iman Mohammad Idris, & Reba Parker)

Through intercultural cooperation, starting, fall of 2010, CP1D will work along with P.R.I.D.E to help write curriculum for their community program. P.R.I.D.E is committed to helping young men/women of the Upper King Street by offering on the job training (restaurant and fish market) and classes that help prepare these students for work in the 21st century. These classes will include character, skills, and network/community training as well as computer skills.