From the 10th to the 12th of November 2018 our team member Joachimg (Media) participated in a Peace Starts With Me Workshop in New York. The reason was to get inspired and to get fresh ideas regarding the motto. As you probably noticed, Peace Starts With me is also the motto of our Interfaith Workshops. Joachim also had the chance to network with the YSP Team of the USA. 

"We sang a lot of songs together, it really united the participants and created a nice atmosphere. Professional musicians, very passionate, great equipment and a lot of power! I'm not used to that in Europe!

The 300 participants were divided in teams of 9, which discussed about their experiences daily. For example we thought of 3 allegedly bad character trades of ourselves. The we thought of actions steps how we could potentially use them in a positive way in the futute. This exercise really suited the motto! I was also impressed how easy it was to have open conversations with basically strangers. I would love to create a similar culture of communication in Germany!

Networking with YSP USA, it became clear that they are also just at the beginning. Still they shared a lot of valuable experiences that will especially help us to organizie events in Germany more professionally. They also presented the concept of "Peace Designer" to me. The purpose of "Peace Designer" is to train people to develop concrete solutions working towards peace and to actually put them into action."