Peace Festival Unites Community Members In Teaneck

TEANECK, NJ — The following news release comes courtesy of a Patch community member. Find out how to post announcements or events to your local Patch site.

Under the theme "Plant a Seed for Peace, Watch It Grow at Home," the New Jersey chapter of the Women's Federation for World Peace (WFWP) recently invited the Peace Starts With Me Alliance of New Jersey to celebrate the International Day of Peace.

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The Peace Starts With Me Alliance partnered with the Peace Islands Institute NJ to participate in its annual Peace Festival held at Milton A. Votee Park in Teaneck, New Jersey. The alliance brought several of its signature elements and vibrant community contributions to the multicultural celebration:

• Bridge of Peace Ceremony: Offering WFWP's signature reconciliation ceremony, where individuals from different cultural or religious backgrounds cross a symbolic bridge. Participants make a conscious choice to move from being observers to active partners with a shared promise: to celebrate each other's heritage, protect each other's dignity, and weave individual threads into one unbreakable tapestry of peace.
• The Peace Starts With Me Choir & Cultural Performances: Providing uplifting musical performances alongside diverse cultural presentations representing Korea, Japan, China/Taiwan, Turkey, and Ghana.

Partner Organizations and Interactive Booths

Throughout the festival, affiliated organizations hosted interactive booths, activities, and initiatives to engage attendees of all ages:

• Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (FFWPU): Focused on the vision of "One Family Under God," emphasizing that all people share a divine spiritual origin and are meant to live as one global family. FFWPU invited New Jersey's diverse communities to focus on what unites us, promoting interfaith friendship, mutual respect, and strong families as the primary "School of Love." At their booth, FFWPU offered performances by the Japanese Crane Dancers, distributed "Faith, Freedom, Peace" T-shirts, provided custom calligraphy, hosted a fishing pond, and taught origami for kids.
• Universal Peace Federation (UPF) & American Clergy Leadership Conference (ACLC): Highlighted the Peace Road Initiative, introducing the global grassroots movement born out of the 1981 vision for an International Peace Highway initiated by Rev. Sun Myung Moon. His wife, the Mother of Peace, Dr. Hak Ja Han, turned this vision into an annual call to action, encouraging cooperation across national, cultural, and religious borders to advance a more peaceful world.
• Women's Federation for World Peace (WFWP): Hosted a booth where attendees could "plant seeds for peace" and take home a small flower pot to nurture at home.

The festival brought together residents from across New Jersey and Pennsylvania through music, food, and family activities, demonstrating that peace grows when people meet and celebrate together.

The global Peace Starts With Me movement was officially initiated in 2017 by the Mother of Peace, Dr. Hak Ja Han. She launched it as a call to action for a united voice for peace, guided by the "Logic of Love" rather than the logic of power. The Peace Starts With Me Alliance is reigniting its culture of service in honor of Dr. Hak Ja Han's lifelong commitment to bringing people together as one united family of shared values, mutual respect, and interdependence.

It was a natural fit to partner with the Peace Islands Institute (PII) for this event, as PII is guided by the vision of building "islands of peace"—communities where people from all walks of life interact in friendship and service to strengthen civil society.