Children’s Day: Precious Ajunwa's Galaxy4Peace Host Cook4Peace & Children’s Day Hangout

By Galaxy 4 Peace

Lagos Nigeria - 24th May - In observance of the 2017 Children’s Day Celebration, Galaxy4Peace organized a cooking competition at Prudence City College, Yaba where over 100 people showed their commitment to promote peaceful co-existence in Nigeria.

The event titled “Cook4Peace' Competition brought together students to celebrate unity of all people, promote peace, friendship and join in countering violent extremism by advocating for peaceful communities. Cook4Peace competition which engaged members of Galaxy4Peace Peace Education ‘Teach Peace Early’club members and non-club members who hardly get along with each other in the schoolhighlighted young people roles in promoting peacebuilding in school and communities.

Precious Ajunwa, Founder-Project Lead of Galaxy4Peace said, “We do not only teach peace education in class rooms,rather we engage students with activities that instill togetherness, bonding and friendship thereby putting to practice what they have been taught in the Peace Lab during club sessions. Hosting this competition with both Teach Peace Early club and non-club members accentuate our stand on how every young person have great deal of influence in our communities; hence equipping themwith the right values is of great importance. And with this cook a storm for peace event, not only arewe highlightingthe importance of adopting zero-tolerance to violence, we are reiterating essence of young generation involvement in building peaceful co-existence at large”

At Galaxy4Peace, we go with the research which shows early childhood interventions have the potential to promote healthy lifestyle. Hence early interventions as adopted through peace education programmes such as ‘Teach Peace Early’ foster resilience in children and instil values and behaviours that can reduce violence and promote peace in homes, schools and communities.

While Teach Peace Early clubbers demonstrated their stand which is to win over students who are anti-peace to think about peace, the masterchef-style cooking competition between six teams of three members each;with at least one ‘Teach Peace Early’ club member in each group created tasty nutritious dishes in under 70 minutes.

Presenting their dishes, not only did each group delivered speeches calling for peaceful co-existence, they committed to promote all the values and skills they are empowered during Teach Peace Early Club session to their peers at homes and in other schools. Scoring the teams, judges looked out for teams who demonstrated great use of teamwork, table usage, quality of food, its presentation, and the team peace message.

Mr. Akinwoye Akinsola, Vice Principle Prudence City College said, “Teach Peace Early Club is much needed in our society and am delighted Prudence City College is one of the school benefiting from this Peace Education program in Lagos. Cook4Peace is the first cook out session, not only are we excited it’s holding for the right cause, but it’s an innovative way to promote a great cause which affects everyone, hence together, we can encourage young people to stand for peace.”

Speaking to the school Teach Peace Early club coordinator, Ibrahim Kabiru said "Alone we can do so much little, together we can do so much. It gladdens my heart to see how much we have imparted in the lives of these children peacebuilders. I call on our collective efforts to promote peace teaching from home, schools and world over.”

All students took peace pledge at the end of the competition committing to show through actions messages that promote peace and model responsible -respectful communication.

Highlights of the 2017 children's day event was the children's day hangout with Prudence City College TeachPeaceEarly clubbers and in attendance was Chief Mrs. Olufunmilayo Oke, PCC proprietress and the Vice Principle Mr Akinwoye Akinsola who individually commended Galaxy4Peace programmes and encouraged the students to learn peace education from young peacebuilding experts at no cost.

About Teach Peace Early
A global challenge like violent extremism demands active response from the root cause. Identifying the key solvers of the challenge in question, getting the problem out into the open and involving young people through successions of dialogues leading to positive change is one key to countering violent extremism.

With peace education as a vital tool in facilitating children find peaceful solutions to problems, and in raising a new generation committed to creating a culture of peace; peace education campaign through Teach Peace Early in Nigerian schools is crucial.

Teach Peace Early programs is a peace education teachings that specifically promotes respect, empathy, mutual understanding, respectful communication, and conflict management skills. With this tool executed in Nigerian schools or any gathering where young people are involved, Galaxy4Peace build the passion of young people to uphold harmony in their communities with activities centering on tolerance, love, forgiveness, unity, empathy, peace, respect, integrity etc.