Students: Will Everett, Maya Gerard, Tess McDonald, Liam Glanville and Oscar Mulcahey

 

The UNESCO 2024 program theme was Peace. Our group chose to read A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, which took place in Sierra Leone. It followed the story of a child soldier throughout the 1993 Civil War and highlighted his struggles of reintegrating back into civilian life after years of traumatic bloodshed and violence. Before reading this book, none of us had ever heard of the civil war in Sierra Leone. So that got us thinking, when do we appreciate our peace? We were inspired to create a flower garden called Plants of Peace to spread the message of peace through the use of poems within our community. The garden had three of 5 different types of flowers, each type represented a poem written by an American poet that we hand-picked. The garden also included QR codes for each flower that linked to a Google site that we designed, which shared our poems. The site shared our inspiration from A Long Way Gone as well as our message of peace to the community. Our goal was to remind everyone of the importance and elusiveness of peace still today. The flowers representing peace we decided to share were: White Poppies, Peonies, Violets, Cosmos, and Lavender. We used different materials to create the flowers, and we made the garden base out of foam board and painted it green. We then inserted the flowers and added a fence to complete our garden. Afterward, we placed QR codes under the flowers so that our audience could easily view the poems attached to the flowers. After the whole project was ready we put our hard work towards a purpose and found a way to spread our message. We contacted our principal, local libraries, and city hall and displayed it at these places for a month at a time. It circulated through these three areas spreading the idea of peace. People saw our project, scanned the QR code corresponding to each flower, and gained a moment of reflection by reading the peaceful poems. Just like us, after we read A Long Way Gone, many people appreciated the peace that they often experience.