PEACE DAY

The International Day of Peace is a worldwide recognized event on the 21st of September which is designed to promote peace. The event is officially inaugurated at the UN Headquarters with the ringing of the 'Peace Bell;' a bell cast from the donated coins of children from all continents, with the inscription on its side, 'Long live absolute world peace.'

In the International School of Havana we celebrate Peace Day in various differing ways each year. However, we always hold an assembly on the day of the event which not only includes musical performances from the primary and lower secondary school, but also oral or visual presentations on why peace is so important in today's world and how we can strive to maintain it ourselves. Role models such as Gandhi, or Nelson Mandela are used to convey this message, such as examples of the suffering that war and conflict can cause.

Likewise each year we hold the origami paper crane contest to honour the memory of a little Japanese girl Sadako. Sadako was living in Japan at the time of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bomb attacks, and became sick with leukemia due to radiation poisoning. She believed in the old Japanese legend that if you make one thousand paper cranes you will granted a wish. She died by the time she had made around 600 paper cranes. To hold tribute to Sadako each year we hold the origami paper crane contest in which anybody can participate. There are categories of the largest or smallest paper crane, the most beautiful and the most made. When Peace Day arrives we present these paper cranes to the Japanese Ambassador who sends them back to Japan, for this ritual is followed in almost all parts of Japan and many other places in the world.

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