Program Overview

Project PeacePal is:

• A letter writing program for both teachers and students. For teachers, PeacePal offers a standards-based literacy and peace skills curriculum that develops students’ abilities to communicate ideas, resolve conflicts and become leaders for peace. For students, PeacePal provides an opportunity to directly connect with a peer in a country across the globe. PeacePal letters provide a door through which students can step into another individual’s world and begin to learn specifics about their life in a way that they might not otherwise learn.

• A service leaning program that helps improve the lives of PeacePals living in remote areas affected by war, poverty, or disease. Going above and beyond the level of personal correspondence, friendships created in the letter writing program are deepened by youth-driven service projects making a positive difference in communities around the world.

To date, PeacePal has:

• Connected more than 5,000 youth in numerous countries throughout the world, including many developing nations: Afghanistan, Burundi, Canada, China, The Gambia, Ghana, Guatemala, Hungary, India, Israel, Japan, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Palestine, Republic of Congo, Senegal, South Africa, South Korea, Togo, Turkey, Uganda, and the United States. Leaders in these communities, volunteering their time and effort, act as international project directors for PeacePal building community and bridges of peace with local youth eager to connect with peers abroad.
• Developed and implemented Stamp Out Malaria, a dynamic service leaning initiative, inspiring youth leaders to raise funds which will be used to purchase and distribute thousands of long lasting anti-malaria bed nets preventing this deadly disease in PeacePal communities in Togo and Ghana, West Africa. By June of 2011 PeacePal raised $20,000 and delivered 4, 700 nets to friends in Ghana and Togo. 

• Inspired students and student groups to develop service project initiatives specific to their PeacePal community. Students at one middle school in New Mexico raised funds in 2009 to help their PeacePals in Pakistan purchase a generator to provide ongoing electricity to their classroom during the ongoing domestic conflict in that country. In May of 2011 a student at another New Mexico school organized bake sales and a car wash to raise funds for her PeacePal's school in Uganda.

• Hosted various peace-related events bringing together diverse members of the local community.

• Hosted Caravan To Peace, the world premier of the documentary film Stealing The Light. This event raised over $12,000 of which $8,000 was donated to partner organization Green Village Schools to help rebuild a school in Afghanistan destroyed during the war.