Peace Playground is a program that is done weekly during our summer camp at the Willow Branch Apartments. Every year on Martin Luther King Jr. day, we revisit the program and hold a special event. Peace Playground focuses on the key principles surrounding the topics of Non-Violence that Dr. King wrote about and used in the Civil Rights Movement. For a better understanding for our kids who participate, the key principles have been re-written and named the “Principles of Peace”. These 6 principles are a framework for how we work on forming a peaceful community.
- Brave people live in peace.
- A loving community makes a peaceful world.
- Fight bad things not bad people.
- Be peaceful when others are not, because that is the peaceful world we want.
- Avoid violence on the inside and outside.
- The whole world is on the side of good.
This year the theme of Peace Playground was titled “Join the Movement”. We participated in some dramas, poetry, dancing, singing and art. First, we engaged in activities that supported our theme, starting with keeping our bodies in movement. We have learned how engaging the body is a way to let out pain, hardship and bring joy. Second, we created banners of different movements that will hang for show in our After-School Center. Last, we sang joyful songs together, and topped it off with some dancing of course! We ended our “Join the Movement” activities with a group discussion expressing the healing of movement, and how these movements can result in participating in creating our peace within our own communities. “Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.” (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)
