1989 28 Nov - 8 Dec
198- |
In 1988, when 14 young Soviets youth were hosted by the Bahá'ís at a summer camp in Hawaii, they were introduced to the Universal House of Justice's peace statement, found it to be supportive of their mission, and invited the Bahá'ís to come and share it with Soviet youth.
In return, under the auspices ofYouth Ambassadors International (YAI) and Foundation for Social Innovation (FSI), 62 Bahá'ís from eight Pacific Island nations made a return trip to the Soviet Union. The project was called the "Promise of World Peace Tour". They spent five days in Moscow and four in Kazan, capital of the Tatar ASSR.
Their activities were:
The group was invited to a youth congress held to launch a Moscow branch of the School for Planetary Thought. During that event the peace statement was briefly examined, and Bahá'u'lláh was named as Author of its fundamental principles. The talk received a standing ovation.
The young ambassadors visited the Home for Children of Dysfunctional Families near Moscow, and presented a copy of the peace statement to its director.
Copies of the statement were also presented during a visit to the Pushkin estate and new Pushkin Museum outside Moscow. In return, the group was invited to develop a summer work-study program whereby western youth could "earn rubles" working side by side with Soviet youth in crafts, archaeological and restoration projects.
The group was invited to visit Kazan, at that time a "closed city", where they spent four days touring schools and visiting private homes.
They were asked to address the problem of youth gangs in Kazan. At a meeting with gang members a documentary on youth gangs was shown, after which copies of the peace statement were given out.
At a forum at Kazan University the Student League arranged for the Bahá'ís to speak to 250-300 students. After the talk, the students spontaneously formed 20 small discussion groups, eager to discuss the ideas they had heard. The students accepted hundreds of copies of the peace statement.
Media coverage of the nine-day tour included three television interviews with Bahá'ís who introduced the peace statement and spoke freely about the Faith. One newspaper printed an editorial about the peace statement, and another in Moscow printed a brief article about the meeting with the youth congress.
Tour T-shirts, which read "Youth Ambassadors Peace Tour" on the front and "World Peace Is Not Only Possible But Inevitable" on the back, in Russian and English, proved quite popular, and 86 were given away along with many Peace Tour and Bahá'í buttons and the contents of nine boxes of Bahá'í literature which included 3,000 copies of the peace statement.
[BN Issue 707 March 1990 p12; BW20p200] |
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Canada
