Peacemakers
Peacemakers
As a United World College, Li Po Chun UWC has a primary goal to promote peace and sustainability - these are key elements of our mission statement. We do this by bringing together young people from all parts of the world to live together, study together, labour together, and most importantly, understand each other.
With the arrival of our new 1st Year students, we have 83 countries represented in our student body this year, an amazing international mix! How many people can even remember the names of 83 countries? This year, we have welcomed our first students ever to come from Angola, Bhutan, Greece, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
This week, I was reading that the BBC had done a major international survey on what it means to be an effective peacemaker. This is important information for anyone in a United World College, and indeed anyone who is committed to building a more peaceful world.
In its survey, the BBC began by asking what people thought was most important for their own personal sense of peace. The top three answers all related to personal security, with family security being most important and financial security and health both being just a little behind.
The survey asked what qualities people thought might characterise effective peacemakers. The top characteristics were problem solving ability, persuasiveness, judgement and charisma. Interestingly, only 8% of respondents thought religion was helpful for peacemaking!
The survey then asked about world peacemakers, who people had heard of and what were the most important characteristics in their success. The most well known of the last 20 years' Nobel Peace prize winners were the South Africans Nelson Mandela (our current UWC President) and FW de Klerk. They were also thought of as the most deserving of their prizes.
The last question in the survey was perhaps the most difficult. The survey asked whether people thought humanity was more naturally inclined towards conflict or co-operation. Interestingly, the results were split 50:50 down the middle on this question. About the same number of people thought humans were naturally co-operative as prone towards conflict. When drilling down into the results, women and the young were more likely to believe that conflict was humanity’s natural inclination. Regionally, Middle-Easterners were most skewed towards co-operation and Europeans most skewed towards conflict.
What does all this have to do with my photo of the week? We have had quite a wet period in Hong Kong this week. During a short break in the rain, I managed to snap this image of the beautiful bougainvilleas in the 3rd floor balcony garden at the western end of the Academic Block. The photo was taken looking across Tolo Harbour as the dark clouds of another wave of storms was approaching. I saw this as highly symbolic of our College’s role as a beacon of peace and hope in a world of darkness and turmoil.
I strongly encourage you to read the full results of the BBC Peacemakers survey, which has a wealth of detail and is well illustrated with some great graphs. The survey can be seen on the BBC website by clicking the link below:
Sunday, 17 September 2006