Peace Designer Workshop #USA

On June 9 and 10, the American chapter of Youth and Students for Peace (YSP) held their first Peace Designer Workshop to teach the curricula of YSP to youth leaders, educators and those who want to work with youth in New York. YSP’s goal is to promote the understanding of “Hyo Jeong” and “Hyo Jeong culture” – a culture centered on the heart of filial piety, among the youth in society. The workshop attracted a total of eighteen people.

The workshop opened with an introduction to YSP, followed by its founders’ vision and then the meaning of hyojeong. Participants were then asked to pair up and share experiences or examples based on filial piety.

The participants immediately dived into practicing how to teach the Four Family Loves chapter education content created by Dr. Robert Kittel and Dr. Tyler Hendricks. Different chapters of the twelve-lesson curricula were given to each participant who rotated in presenting their content to other team members. Valuable feedback and thoughts were given afterwards on how the content could be changed or improved for a youthful audience.

In the afternoon, a presentation was given by Jonathan Stupple on the UN Sustainable Development Goals, followed by an intercultural sharing. Guest speakers representing Islam, Judaism and Christianity were invited to speak about the fundamental aspects of their religions and answer participant questions.

Concluding the day was the first half of the Peace Designer program led by Naokimi Ushiroda, the President of YSP USA; and Naria Gaarder, the Program Administrator for YSP USA. They introduced the meaning, motivation, and goals of a peace project versus a regular service project. On the following day, participants were taught the second half of the Peace Designer program, going through the step-by-step process of collating a successful project and the importance of addressing the root cause of an issue. Each participant worked diligently in researching an issue that resonated within his or her communities and constructed a plan on how they would like to address it. The youth leaders developed a total of six peace project ideas, and several of them plan to implement them in the near future. YSP hopes to expand their goals of collaborating efforts with youth through similar workshops.