Peace Jam Slam

The goal of Peace Jam is to program that encourages youth to “find their own path to peace.” As part of the program the youth make commitments for peace. This involves four areas of commitment. All of these areas involve a commitment to character development and the goal of building peace both within yourself and with those people in your life. The first is Peace Within, character focus approach to positive youth development. The second is to become a Peacemaker, the process of effective conflict resolution both locally and globally. The third is Justice, using the examples of Nobel Peace prize winners to show the youth how it can be done. And fourth was Civic Dialogue, learning the ability to listen to others viewpoints and reason together.

My role in Peace Jam Slam was a youth mentor. My function was as a facilitator whose role was to encourage the teenagers to discuss the topics they had been learning in school or church and help them communicate with each other. Peace Jam Slam was designed to break the day up from the opening ceremony to workshops and family groups. The night before I had planned some activities to get a discussion going but as I was walking out for the opening ceremony I was assigned to a new family group. So I basically went along with what the other mentor had planned. The activities involved getting the youth to discuss topics such as violence and see the diverse backgrounds they each come from.

The whole concept of Peace Jam is built upon the Global Call to Action on first an interpersonal level, then community level, national and finally world level. The Global Call to Action was developed by twelve Nobel Peace Laureates (including the Dalai Lama, Jody Williams and Desmond Tutu) who discussed the issues and came up with ten areas they felt needed immediate action. In many ways there exists a similarity to the U.N. Millenium Project. The difference is that The Global Call to Action works at a local level. As Tip O’Neil said, “All politics is local” so is the way to end extreme poverty, breaking the cycle of violence, halting the spread of global disease and empowering women.

Muhammad Yunus - Banker to the Poor

Awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 2006 along with Grameen Bank "for their efforts to create economic and social development from below" (Nobel). Beginning in the 1970’s Yunus began making personal loans to destitute basketweavers in Bangladesh. In 1983 he founded Gremeen Bank believing that credit is a fundamental human rights with the purpose of “help[ing] poor people escape from poverty by providing loans on terms suitable to them and by teaching them a few sound financial principles so they could help themselves.” (Nobel)

Born in 1940 in the seaport city of Chittagong, Bangladesh Yunus graduated from Vanderbilt University in 1969 with a PhD in Economics. He developed what has become known as micro-lending or microcredit. Fighting poverty through the use of microcredit has been Yunus’ goal. As he describes poverty, “Poverty is the absence of all human rights. The frustrations, hostility and anger generated by abject poverty cannot sustain peace in any society. For building stable peace we must find ways to provide opportunities for people to live decent lives.” (Nobel)

Grameen Bank has made 7 million loans to poor people in Bangladesh, 97% of which are women; As Yunus stated in his Nobel Lecture, “We focused on women because we found giving loans to women always brought more benefits to the family.” (Nobel)

The strategy used by microfinance is the economic growth model and Grameen Bank has shown that it offers the opportunity for people to move above the poverty line.

As Yunus said at his Nobel Lecture, "In a cumulative way the bank has given out loans totaling about US $6.0 billion. The repayment rate is 99%. Grameen Bank routinely makes profit. Financially, it is self-reliant and has not taken donor money since 1995. Deposits and own resources of Grameen Bank today amount to 143 per cent of all outstanding loans. According to Grameen Bank's internal survey, 58 per cent of our borrowers have crossed the poverty line."

Today the world is looking for ways to combat extreme poverty. Grameen Bank and Muhammed Yunus has shown a long term solution that offers opportunities to permanently raise people above the poverty line without becoming dependent upon outside aide. Groups like Kiva Loans have followed the example of Professor Yunus and has begun replacing the moneylenders.