As the New Year is approaching, at World Peace Initiative Foundation, we look back to everything that happened in 2016 and are making plans for the upcoming year.
2016 has been a great year during which we have taken the inner peace further in the peace-building agenda of the world. We have organised four summits in different regions of the world in order to promote meditation as a tool for making the world a more peaceful place. 415 participants from 92 countries gathered together to brainstorm, meditate, network and create new solutions for bringing peace to their communities. European Peace Summit started of in Budapest, Hungary on April 4-7, followed by Africa Peace Summit in Nairobi, Kenya on October 16-20, followed by Latin America Peace Summit on November 25-27 and the South East Europe Peace Summit in Tirana, Albania on December 15-18. We plan to bring people together in conferences to support their inner peace experience and answer questions about introducing inner peace as an important tool of peace building together.
We also held five international fellowships in Thailand including Amani fellowship for African Youth and Artistic meditation retreat. We started a new tradition of one week long Self discovery youth camps for students in Asia Pacific region, and have held two already, in April and September (apply here), we have also held multiple camps for Thai students, and one in association with Belgian scouts. We held regional fellowships to bring more understanding and peace to specific parts of the world – Bridge Fellowship in Georgia (11-14 March), Central & West Africa Seminar for Partnership in Cameroon (19-23 March), Amandla East & Southern Africa Seminar for Partnership in Malawi (25 -27 March), SEE Peace Fellowship in Greece (1-3 April), MENA Salam III Fellowship in Turkey (27-31 May), our first Oceanic Camp in Fiji (30 Aug – 4 Sep) and Heya Fellowship in Morocco for women (9-13 April).
We have taken part in different conferences representing meditation and inner peace, such as Rotary Seoul Convention and UAI Seoul in South Korea, Luxembourg Yoga festival, etc. And we have organized and co-organized peace on demand events and workshops in Australia, Italy, Bulgaria, USA, Cuba, Burundi, Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica, San Salvador, Jamaica, Bahamas, Haiti, Rep. Dominicana, St. Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago, Lesotho, Poland, Spain, Uruguay, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Iran, Argentina, Paraguay, Ecuador, Togo, Gambia, Equatorial Guinea, Benin, Democratic Republic of Congo, Latvia, Serbia, Albania, and China.
We are grateful for everything we were able to do in the past year, for all the people who have discovered meditation and for our wonderful partners, staff, Peace Coaches and Peace Agents who made it happen.
What do we plan for the year 2017?
We shall start the year off with Peace Architect training in January, followed by crew training in February, where we will develop new plans and strategies for the upcoming year, and of course meditate, practise yoga, share and train ourselves. Then, we plan to have one more APU camp for Asian students (1-7 March, Thailand), Bridge Peace fellowship for Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Caucasus (March 16-19, Georgia), Pacific Self discovery camp (24-28 March, Fiji), Heya fellowship for women in the MENA region (14-18 April), the Middle East and North Africa Salam fellowship (27-31 March, Tunisia).
As always we shall hold Peace on demand workshops on every continent, and if we plan together on time, we would most likely be able to to come to your country – in Central America, in Central and West Africa, South and East Africa, Central Asia, South East Europe, Europe, and South America! Contact your regional coordinator to know more.
We are also planning to hold more paid courses to fundraise and support our projects. Please contact us if you have an idea of a meditation paid course and would like to discuss it further.
All the projects we have done so far were created by people who were passionate about inner peace and wanted to share it with the world. Please be brave to share your ideas with us – it is the first step to start fulfilling them, and we are eager to support!