“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”
~ Dalai Lama
To make this an actionable reality on a global scale through a fun learning experience for youth, The Foundation for Peace and Compassionate Leadership in collaboration with the Charter for Compassion is spearheading a movement called Youth Collaborating for Compassion.
This co-initiative supports the self-directed development of young leaders through global intercultural/inter-school conversations and action-learning projects. The YCC projects are initiated at the Middle and High School level by the students themselves (with the support of their teachers)and aimed at developing in them the skills for empathy, collaboration, problem-solving, and action at the local and global levels.
Schools that enroll in the Youth Collaborating for Compassion (YCC) movement become part of a Global Community of Compassionate Schools that support the building of bridges of understanding across cultures, sharing best practices of successful social projects, and reinforcing good work done by students in the network of Compassionate Schools. By being a part of this community, your institution would contribute to nurturing supportive ecosystems for students, wherein they thrive and become the compassionate leaders of tomorrow.
In this endeavour, schools will be supported by three organizations, namely the Foundation for Peace and Compassionate Leadership (FPACL), the Charter for Compassion (CFC).
Peace Pioneers, who are students of Compassionate Schools, catalyze understanding, capacities, and relationships needed by younger practitioners committed to stepping forward and creating the change they want to see in the world.
We envision Peace Pioneers as a global learning network supporting young leaders in Compassionate Schools in the age group of 15 -35 years. The Peace Pioneers will work for peace within themselves, peace with other people, and peace with the environment and all Earthlings. When you join the community of Peace Pioneers you explicitly commit to the principles here:
It is up to each of us, as moral beings, to decide how to act and to freely form our contribution to the whole. We must think this reality through, and not hide from it. This means looking inside oneself and asking “What are the basic principles which help me decide what is good?”, being able to listen to one’s intuition, even when it contradicts the social structures around us. We are all a part of life, and we all have a unique contribution to make. What is that unique approach that I can bring forth?
The world needs us more than ever. It needs Peace Pioneers to be treating problems at the root causes, not just the symptoms, to be making change at a systemic level. Doing what matters requires a capacity to diagnose the problems we face, to understand the underlying patterns, to remove barriers, to find the leverage points, and make the change there. It requires us to be conscious of the consequences of our actions and to choose to do good, not harm, according to the deeper values and the higher ideals we each hold.
The future is created by how we live now. It is not necessary to compromise who we are in the present or to wait to take off the lid that is keeping us from allowing our creative expression to be put to use in areas that matter to us and the world. We don’t focus on all the reasons why it might not work – if the platform and tools do not exist to make our dream possible, we get going in creating them. Learning comes with joyful and peaceful action now.
Connect with something bigger than yourself. Search for those who are working on similar or related things, share ideas with them, ask them for help, and work with them where useful. Be willing to offer them help when they need it as well. Engaging with others is about engaging with those who share your visions, but also about engaging with those who think differently from you and are doing something that may seem completely different and unrelated. Engage across diversity, for that is how we learn.
Understanding is constantly evolving, and there is always the possibility of future discovery. While committing to our current intentions, we have to continue to question our own views as we continue to question others and listen to their answers. As we start to view the world from the perspective of life, more and more practices around us simply do not make sense. We are surrounded by paradoxes in a phase when established systems no longer meet our needs. We need to perceive and question these paradoxes, daring to appear naive, while developing the capacity to transcend them.
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Young leaders from around the world are given opportunities for a free exchange of ideas across borders.
Help students to develop important skills to grow as Future Leaders and Peace Pioneers.
Which will be a collective effort to bring change into the society and solve real life problems at root levels!
