2025: Spark Peace Project
This year, we’re inviting youth around the globe to join us on a journey to build a more peaceful world. Through creative action, students can explore their understanding of peace, identify its barriers, and share their vision for a more compassionate, peaceful, and inclusive society.
The deadline to submit creative work to the Spark Peace Project is June 9, 2025.
Join us!
The Spark Peace Project invites young people everywhere to use their power and creativity to engage with the world’s most pressing issues and build a more peaceful world.
Use our ready-made lesson plans and creative resources to support students as they learn and explore what peace and compassion mean to themselves, their communities, and worldwide.
Students then choose a creative medium to express their ideas about peace. Each work of creative expression—or student engaged—triggers a $5 donation for organizations doing peacebuilding work around the world.
$955,585
raised of $1,000,000 goal
90,835
creative expressions
72,782
youth engaged
Why the Spark Peace Project?
Peace and compassion are needed today more than ever.
Young people face an increasingly complex world with global conflicts, social injustices, and mental health challenges shaping their realities.
Help young people grow.
Teaching students about peace helps them develop problem-solving and social-emotional skills and promotes compassion, critical thinking, and collaboration—essential tools for navigating and solving the complex challenges they face and becoming impactful and engaged global citizens.
Students can be empowered.
Deepening their understanding of peace empowers young people to positively impact their world, both now and in the future. It also helps youth explore global issues and connect to youth worldwide.
What Does it Mean to Be Present? Butterfly Art
Team
Spreckels Wildcats
Reflection
My fourth graders and I read the book What Does It Mean to Be Present? The book is about mindfulness and being in the moment. Each page has a butterfly on it so we used this as inspiration (aswellaMysteryScienceaboutwhybutterfliesaresocolorful) to create butterflies. My students then wrote words to represent what peace is to them .
The Key to Peace: Peace Keychains
Team
Let’s go for the Gold and Achieve Peace
Reflection
The students in the 318A HR at CTK HS are in the picture holding peace keychains! This is a walking art display to have as a reminder to ourselves and others that peace is the key!
Honor Shield
Team
John Marshall High School Bears
Reflection
Youth explored character traits that contribute to personal and community peace. They chose one or more traits that are the most important to them and then made an personal honor shield.
Ballet
Team
Enrichment at Bethany School
Reflection
Holly has created a visual drawing of a hobby that brings her peace and calmness and hopes to bring this forward for someone else.
Target Peace
Team
John Marshall High School Bears
Reflection
Youth were given training for self soothing strategies that help to center yourself back into a peaceful state in the event of stress. They were to use those startegies, other strategies they may know of to create art to target peace.
Drawing and painting class
Team
Patterson for peace project
Reflection
students created artwork using watercolor paints and acrylic paints
Kindness Rocks
Team
Highcroft Huskies Bark Peace
Reflection
We created a “Kindness Rock Garden” to share messages of peace and belonging at our school.
United We Stand
Team
WCMS Dragons
Reflection
At our school, students came together to participate in a vibrant and meaningful art project that celebrated our unity through diversity. Each student created a square in the bold colors of the American flag—red, white, and blue—transforming simple pieces of ART into a stunning mosaic of creativity and expression. The classroom buzzed with excitement, laughter as students shared stories about their roots while collaborating on a shared vision. This project, aptly titled “United We Stand,” was not just about artistic expression; it was a powerful reminder of our collective identity and pride as an American. The finished artwork, displaying an array of colorful squares, stands as a testament to how we can achieve a peaceful community with still being different. We can ALL come together to form something beautiful, illustrating that while we each have our unique backgrounds, we are all part of one nation.
Drawing for Peace
Team
GU76H54W3A8Q
Reflection
Our submission depicts a globe with the symbol of peace and a bookshelf with books about peace.
Geode Art
Team
John Marshall High School Bears
Reflection
Youth wrote affirmation statements to help sooth and be more mindful for personal peace. These affirmations used the hard crust and plainness of a geode on the outside and then when breaking through crusts of emotion and trauma to find inner beauty for peace. Discussions include: Focusing on inner work. Face painful emotional situations. Enhance our lives through self-growth. Benefit physical health and wellbeing when finding personal peace. Build strength and courage to overcome challenges and keep moving ahead.
See what students are creating around the world
Use this map to find other teams participating in the project — the pins show where teams created their works of creative expression. Click the icons to learn how the programs you helped fund are making a difference.
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Browse Project Resources
Activity guides, lesson plans, videos, and more to help you implement Students Rebuild in your school or organization.
The programs your art helps fund
For each Students Rebuild annual Project, we partner with high-impact organizations working on the ground to help strengthen communities worldwide—many of them household names. The funds we donate transform student work into immediate, on-the-ground progress for carefully vetted programs that are evaluated according to the outcomes they produce. In addition to extending our reach and helping our funding make more of a difference, our partners also inform the resources we provide to teachers and students.
- Impact Partners
- Participation Partners
- Amplification Partners
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Is there an active Students Rebuild Project right now?
Yes! The Spark Peace Project, which kicked off in the fall of 2024, will run until the summer of 2025. Students can participate by creating a project that reflects their ideas about peace and compassion and submitting it through our website.
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When is the deadline to submit creative expressions to the Spark Peace Project?
The Spark Peace Project will end in June 2025. Please make sure to register and submit your creative expressions before then.
Creativity in action
NAHS personal peace expression
Team
Irish NAHS
Reflection
Students were asked to create a work of art that could literally or symbolically show what peace means to them, or an activity that brings them peace.
Peace
Team
Children-Led Community Peace Labs
Reflection
Our submission features children from the Children-Led Community Peace Labs program under Re-Imagining New Communities engaging in a peace-themed art activity. They colored images of the peace hand symbol to express unity, harmony, and nonviolence within their communities. This collective artwork, created in a circle, symbolizes collaboration, hope and the power of children to lead and inspire peaceful communities.
Peace Message Painting
Team
Brookside Adventures Plus
Reflection
The students used painters tape to create a design on their paper. They then painted their paper using bright colors. After painting, they removed the tape. Where the tape was they wrote their message of peace exploring the concept of Self-talk. Self-talk is how we speak to ourselves, otherwise known as our inner voice. We might not be aware that we’re doing it, but we almost certainly are.
Increase the peace
Team
Sunshiners
Reflection
Submitted make peace grow “taller’
Spark Peace Art Club Entries
Team
Eagle Pride
Reflection
These are the first submissions from our art club team, which has 25 members. We are all working on pieces to submit because we all feel very passionate about using visual art to “Spark Peace!”
Acivity at Groupe Scolaire Kitabura – Musanze District
Team
Green Horizon Ventures
Reflection
Green Horizon Ventures collaborated with the Art for Change organization for an activity held in Musanze, located in the Northern Province of Rwanda. A total of 150 students, aged 9 to 12, participated in various activities, including creating peace collages, drawing, writing poetry, and singing. The students expressed their interpretations of peace both in written and oral forms, which enhanced their artistic creations. During the presentations of their peace-themed work, six groups of 25 students each engaged the entire school, which consists of approximately 2,500 students. The event took place at Groupe Scolaire Kitabura in Musanze District
Peace Painting
Team
7th Grade Middies
Reflection
Students created paintings using imagery of doves to symbolize peace.
Crane Collections
Team
Partners for Peace
Reflection
Thanks to the powerful story of Sadako Sasaki, paper cranes inspire the world with a message of peace, hope, and resilience. Sadako’s legacy of paper cranes inspired her classmates, and then the world. Art students folded paper cranes in her honor, attaching them to a natural branch, becoming beautiful sculptures of peace and harmony.
Clay Hearts
Team
John Marshall High School Bears
Reflection
Youth made clay hearts from sculpting clay to give to people who lost recently lost someone from health conditions. The hearts are an anchor to provide emotional support and personal peace.
Valentine’s Day Fundraising Challenge
Team
SACRED HE’ARTISTS’
Reflection
Students were given the prompt to share any signs and symbols of their own choice to celebrate love on the 14th February by aiding those in need.
Knit Hats Warm Heads and Hearts
Team
John Marshall High School Bears
Reflection
This project was rolling legacy yarn and making knit hats to bring calm and peace to the knitter and warmth and peace to the recipient.
Pilowcases for Peace
Team
John Marshall High School Bears
Reflection
Youth made pillowcases to help bring a calm and peaceful slumber.
