Today the little ones at PlusKids marked the Day of Peace with great enthusiasm and, along the way, learned some important lessons.
On the day given over to peace we saw the children understand that tolerance and understanding are the keys to a better world. It is a large theme for their age, and the surest way to miss it is to leave it abstract. So we brought it to where they can test it: into their own group. Peace, at eight years old, means very concretely what you do when two children want the same seat at the table, how you react when someone spoils your work by accident, and whether you speak up when you see someone left out.
We showed them that through communication and empathy a future can be built in which peace prevails — and that both of those are practised. Empathy is not a feeling that arrives on its own; it is the habit of pausing for a moment and asking how the situation looks from where the other person is standing. That is exactly the exercise we did, using situations the children meet all the time.
Let us always remember that every act of kindness adds to the harmony around us. In a group of children you can see it the same day: it takes only two or three of them to start behaving differently for the mood of the whole room to change.