During November last year, secondary schools in Mallow gathered to begin the Rotary Peace Advocacy Project.
This involved a two-day teaching course at Mallow College of Further Education, with the aim of the scheme being to tackle the issues and challenges surrounding modern society and social media.
Rotary International Champion of Peace, Jean Best, hosted the event with close support of her husband.
With her experience as a peace officer, Jean has developed many peace confliction resolution strategies that she wishes to implement in schools across the country.
Integration, empathy and treating everyone as equal are important for a peaceful society.”
In preparation for their reunion in May, each team had a task to develop a presentation, combining their skills learnt previously.
The topics presented by each team were equally impressive and diverse; varying from the causes of stress, bullying and time spent on social media.
Guest speaker, David Stanton TD, Minister of State at the Department of Justice and Equality, admired the commitment all the students had shown.
He added, “Integration, empathy and treating everyone as equal are important for a peaceful society.”
For the new peace advocates, it is their duty to reimburse this information to their peers, making schools a better environment.
Local Rotary member Pat Leogue, who also supported the programme, commented, “Another key topic addressed was that of planning to ensure their schools would have fully trained peace advocates in the future and how schools could work peace advocacy into regular curricular.”
Judges Garth Arnold and Conny Ovesen selected two winning teams, who were awarded with a day at Ballyhass Lakes.
The Rotary Club of Mallow give their greatest thanks to Mallow College of Further Education for providing and facilitating them with the venue, allowing the project to be delivered.
