As Peace is Sexy celebrates its third anniversary on Valentine’s Day, I would like to wish the community a peaceful and sexy holiday. On a global level, this has been a difficult year, with disease, terrorism, invasions and crises taking center stage. But on a more personal level, I’ve seen peace be created, made accessible and propagated across the world.
Zak Ebrahim, who we featured in a Peace is Sexy article back in 2012 has been getting a lot of attention for his message of peace and tolerance despite being the son of a terrorist since his talk at this year’s TED Conference. Lifevest Inside, an organization that focuses on spreading the message of kindness which we featured also 2 years ago in a Peace is Possible article, has been making kindness go viral. Top educational institutions like Georgetown University have invited me to present on the theme of Peace is Profitable. And finally, I’ve been interviewed on why peace isn’t always portrayed as fun in the media and what we can do to change that.
Even more exciting is that we received a PEACEapp grant to develop and gamify the stories that we tell on Peace is Sexy… turning them into a Peace Superheroes game! We’re excited to be getting mentoring from some amazing folks in the game design industry and to be going to the Build Peace conference in Cyprus in April to meet with more technology and social change folks.
I’ve also been active in the field of Peace Journalism: training over 100 Mozambican reporters (in Portuguese!) in conflict sensitive reporting ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections. (If you didn’t know that Mozambique had elections in October, you should take it as a good sign and that they were generally peaceful and that the media didn’t incite violence.) Additionally, I started the Peace Journalism – Africa group on Facebook and the Peace Journalists Guild on LinkedIn. Feel free to connect with us there.
In the coming year, I’m excited to announce that we’ll be developing a number of workbooks. If you haven’t downloaded it already, check out 16 Easy Shortcuts to a More Balanced, Happier, Saner Life. We just put out “Participate in Dreaded Conversations with Ease“, and it’ll be followed by “Your Media Diet: Stay Informed without Getting Depressed” and “Business as a Force for Good” coming out later this year.
Thank you for being part of the Peace is Sexy community and we’d love to hear what you’ve been doing to make peace sexy, possible, profitable and/or fun in the past year. Leave us a note on our Facebook page!
Peace on!
Marianne