Through funding from the youth-driven Spark Peace Project, 100cameras, CARE, Ceeds of Peace, Choose Love, MUSÉ, Green Horizon Ventures, and Kids for Peace are working to promote peace and understanding across the globe
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – Seven global peacebuilding organizations have been chosen to receive grants totaling up to $1 million through the Students Rebuild Spark Peace Project, powered by Creative Visions. Creative Visions announced the selection of impact partners Ceeds of Peace, Kids for Peace, 100cameras, CARE, Choose Love, Green Horizon Ventures, and MUSÉ, all actively creating peace in their communities and worldwide.
Students Rebuild is a global movement that inspires young people to use their creativity to engage with our world’s most pressing issues and create meaningful change. This year’s Spark Peace Project will engage young people worldwide to explore peace within, peace with others, and peace around the world, then express their vision through the creative medium of their choice: literary, performing, and visual arts, music, film, or even cutting-edge STEM projects. Each act of creativity or student engaged sparks a $5 donation from Creative Visions—with support from the Bezos Family Foundation—for the seven global peacebuilding organizations, up to $1 million.
Peace can feel distant in a world grappling with social injustice and conflict. In 2023, the Edelman Trust Barometer Report shared that the majority of people in 15 of the leading 26 global countries believe their country is more divided today than in the past. Following consequential elections around the world—including the US presidential election—young people globally are less confident than ever about what the future holds for their generation.
“When we look at the world today, it can be easy to feel hopeless, but young people show us, time and again, not to give up,” said Students Rebuild Lead Sarah Fanslau. “Through creativity, young people from LA to Lahore can use their voices to bring peace to themselves, others, and their communities.”
While students learn about peace and express their ideas through creative expression, the seven impact partners are actively working to build more peace in their communities and worldwide.
- 100cameras is launching the “100cameras: Through Their Lens” project, in which they are teaching photography to 100 youth from low-income, under-resourced communities across four cohorts in Tennessee, Florida, Illinois, and Nebraska to encourage self-expression and connection to their communities.
- CARE is maintaining its numerous peacebuilding efforts worldwide, including training educators working with Ukrainian refugees in Poland to establish supportive learning environments where refugee children can integrate, build resilience, and develop a sense of belonging.
- Ceeds of Peace is transforming how schools in Hawai’i address conflict through its Restorative Practices in Community Schools initiative. It supports the training of at least 90 students and 30 staff across six Hawai’i schools in restorative practices to reduce the rate of disciplinary infractions and increase student belonging.
- Choose Love is spreading its funds across nine programs in conflict areas around the world. In these programs, refugee youth receive holistic psychosocial support (PSS) and are encouraged to use creative storytelling and citizen journalism to promote compassion.
- Green Horizon Ventures is hosting a series of impactful initiatives designed to empower Rwandan youth to explore and engage in creative expression and resource youth groups and local school systems in Kigali and beyond.
- Kids for Peace is hosting the Peaceful Pen Pal Project and Peace Together– Expressing the Peace Pledge, which utilizes visual and performing art projects to encourage collaboration and foster peace and compassion across 25,000 youth in all 50 U.S. states and 91 countries.
- MUSÉ is engaging youth in the Arhuaco and Kogi Indigenous communities in the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta region of Colombia through its Earth Tones project. In a series of gatherings through ceramic workshops that follow a mindfulness curriculum, participants will craft their own ocarinas through a process designed for self-reflection and expression.
The Spark Peace Project follows in the footsteps of successful Students Rebuild campaigns like last year’s Extraordinary Earth Project, which raised $1.5 million to support environmental causes through more than 165,000 pieces of creative expression. This year, youth participants will also have the opportunity at the end of the school year to vote and decide which of these organizations will receive an additional $50,000 to further their peace work.
To learn more or to sign up for the Spark Peace Project, visit www.studentsrebuild.org/spark-peace.
###
Spark Peace Project impact partner logos and quotes can be found here.
About Students Rebuild
Students Rebuild is a Creative Visions program. Created in January 2010 by the Bezos Family Foundation in response to the devastating Haiti earthquake, Students Rebuild has mobilized more than 1.3 million participants in 102 countries and all 50 states and raised more than $12.5 million in matching funds. Annual Project funds have worked towards rebuilding schools in Haiti, bringing awareness to humanitarian crises in Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, helping Syrian youth from conflict areas recover from crisis, and supporting empowerment opportunities for youth affected by hunger and food insecurity. Find more at www.studentsrebuild.org and @StudentsRebuild.
About Creative Visions
Creative Visions empowers artists, filmmakers, musicians, and other impact media makers to raise awareness of critical issues and drive positive change through storytelling – one of our most powerful tools for creating a more just, caring, and sustainable world. A nonprofit organization and United Nations NGO, Creative Visions’ Impact Education programs support youth, educators, and changemakers to understand how to use media, arts and technology to take creative action about the things they care about. For more information: www.creativevisions.org.
