Dr Fiona Macaulay: PeaceJam - Making Peace 'Cool for school' - Spring 2009

The University of Bradford is the only university in the UK - indeed in the whole of Europe - that plays host every year to a different Nobel Peace Prize winner. For three days in March, for the last four years, the University has been honoured by the presence of four globally-recognised peace activists, all, as it happens, women of enormous conviction, courage and charisma. Máiread Corrigan Maguire, founder of a peace movement during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, Jody Williams, coordinator of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, Rigoberta Menchú Tum, spokeswoman for her indigenous people during the civil war in Guatemala, and Shirin Ebadi, a women's rights advocate from Iran, have all come to Bradford because of PeaceJam, an international youth peace education programme.

Although each one has given a public lecture to the University community of staff, students and alumni, and members of the public on the Friday night, they are here primarily to work with teenagers - normally around 200 in number - who have come to be inspired by these extraordinary individuals, to learn from a Peace Laureate and from one another about how to resolve conflict peacefully, and gain new skills and confidence so that they can take practical action themselves for a safer and more just society.

I became involved with PeaceJam when I was admissions tutor in the Department of Peace Studies. I quite innocently agreed to a meeting with one of the co-founders of PeaceJam, Dawn Engle, in late 2005. By the time she had left my office two hours later, I realised that this was an amazing opportunity for the University, for our students, and for the young people in Bradford and the surrounding district. I was determined that PeaceJam should come to a city that not only suffers more than its fair share of multiple deprivations and social tensions, but also has a long and proud history of activism for peace and social justice (few people know that Bradford boasts its very own Nobel Peace prize winner, Sir Norman Angell, who was awarded the honour in 1933).

PeaceJam was dreamt up in Denver, Colorado in 1994 by Ivan Suvanjieff, a long-haired, leather-clad rock-and-roll musician. One day he challenged some teenagers hanging out on his street, who were clearly dealing drugs and toting handguns. To his astonishment, when the conversation veered round to South Africa, they started singing the praises of Archbishop Desmond Tutu whom they saw as 'really cool' for having stood up - non-violently - to apartheid. It was a light-bulb moment. He recruited his friend Dawn Engle, who had had contact with the Dalai Lama's office. On a wing and a prayer they travelled to Dharamsala and convinced His Holiness that young people needed positive role models such as himself. He agreed, invited his fellow Nobel Peace Prize winners, and PeaceJam was born. The group of 12 participating Laureates form the board of the organisation and decide its vision, educational curriculum and strategies - this level of direct involvement of the Laureates makes PeaceJam unique.

What has always surprised me at the PeaceJam youth conferences in Bradford and at the international PeaceJam events in Denver and Los Angeles is how teenagers - from an incredibly wide range of backgrounds, nice liberal middle-class kids, Latino gang members, Tibetans, Argentinians, South Africans, British white working class, Asian Muslim, asylum-seekers - can relate so passionately and directly with the Laureates. The Laureates themselves come in all shapes and sizes - some are religious leaders or religiously-inspired, others are secular, some have a very calm spiritual quality, others are more a whirlwind of righteous anger and passion - yet they all manage to communicate their absolute conviction that in the face of injustice everyone and anyone can, indeed should, raise their individual voice and make a difference.

So, why would a lecturetheatre full of 13-17-year-olds respond to a diminutive, middle-aged lawyer and academic like Shirin Ebadi? First of all, the young people do not feel patronised. I think that we greatly underestimate just how much young people understand about the nature and causes violence in their own environments and in the wider world. Jody Williams, whom we hosted in 2007, was on her way home from an exhausting and traumatising month of interviewing refugees in Darfur for the United Nations. She did not pull her punches: she talked of the endless testimonies she had heard of rape of women refugees by the janjaweed militias. The young people responded by asking her detailed and well-informed questions about the apparent inaction of the United Nations, the Sudanese government, her capacity to deal with stress and trauma in her work, her views on international justice issues. In turn she listened to them discussing their problems of bullying, racism and drugs in their schools and communities.

A view often voiced by participants is that young people are too often viewed as a 'problem' rather than as a solution. We have created a society in which young people are invited above all to be consumers but not citizens. They are expected to find identity and status in their mobile phones and MP3 players, or in their sexual attractiveness, not in what they actually do or think. Jody Williams put it succinctly: "Listen, shopping is not a human right. Instead of hanging out in the mall for hours every Saturday, go do some volunteer work, raise money, do some campaigning."

Teenagers are often very passionate - and angry - often frustrated at a world in which adults do not behave in a fair or responsible manner. When they do not feel listened to, their self-esteem plummets and they channel this frustration into apathy, bad attitude or harming themselves or others. Shirin Ebadi talked of her anger at losing her job as a judge after the Iranian Revolution of 1979-80 (she was the first-ever woman judge). I was furious, but I didn't go and shout and demonstrate. I thought, I'll make them really regret this one day. So I worked hard in my private law practice, standing up for women and children's rights, working for a new equality law. And on the day I received my Nobel Peace Prize in Norway and it was broadcast all over the world, and in Tehran, I thought, they'll be sorry now they underestimated me! After the 2006 PeaceJam with Máiread Corrigan Maguire, one girl returned to tell us 'I realised through hearing her speak [about her response to the death of her sister's children in the violence in Northern Ireland] that I was hanging out with some mean people. We were always looking for other girls to pick on and bully. But I didn't like them really. So I changed my group of friends, they like me, and now I do my homework and don't get into trouble; my parents are much happier too'.

This personal transformation can result from the encounter with the Laureate - and with each other. For those from comfortable backgrounds, PeaceJam is an event that they share with people and life experiences far removed from their own. For some participants, struggling with English as a second language, with their school work and their behaviour, involvement in PeaceJam, in school and at our events, is a very important anchor in sometimes chaotic lives. One teacher noted "I am sure that many of the young people I bring would have been excluded from school by now, were it not for PeaceJam. And best of all, especially as far as the boys are concerned, it's made peace cool in school."

But personal transformation needs to be linked to community transformation. And our PeaceJammers have had lots of great ideas about how to change their communities and world. Their projects, designed and carried out by the teenagers, fall within the PeaceJam Global Call to Action, 10 priority areas of social change drawn up by the Nobel Laureates, ranging from tackling racism and extreme poverty to environmental and human rights protection and disarmament. Projects to date have included raising money for partner schools in Africa, peer mentoring, campaigning for disability rights, educating their peers on domestic violence, achieving school Fairtrade status, setting up Amnesty International, organising day events on human rights in Burma, on asylum-seekers...all done with great creativity, passion and student ownership. The slogan of PeaceJam is 'One person can make a difference', and PeaceJammers return to their school or youth group from the conference fired up and ready to inspire their classmates because collectively they can make an even bigger difference. Another girl commented, "I am really proud of who I am now." Shirin Ebadi stressed "Listen, I don't want to be your role model. Your life will have different challenges from mine. Look around and learn from lots of different people that you admire and find your own path in life." The Laureates are adept at inspiring young people but are careful not to be put on a pedestal. As Ivan says: "If a fool like me could set up PeaceJam, just imagine what you can do if you put your mind to it!"