Kirkcaldy kids help to promote peace

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/05/2010 (5874 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

What does peace mean to you?

Grade 3 and 4 Kirkcaldy Heights students tackled the question yesterday as participants in the Seeds for Peace project that’s garnering accolades nationwide and helping brighten up the lives of those living in countries in turmoil around the world.

"To me, peace is happiness, like a nice day … a beautiful sight like the mountains on a sunny day," Grade 4 student Dylan Sauter told the Sun.

Brydon Martens agreed, adding that access to fresh water, a healthy family and a warm bed to sleep in at night come to mind when he thinks of peace.

Seeds for Peace was developed less than five months ago by Ontario-based public school teacher assistant Jeff Arsenault as a tool to inspire students to live a compassionate and hopeful life as well as to promote gardening. Students were each given two small white envelopes that they were to fill with seeds and decorate using symbols of peace. Sauter chose a dove and Martens chose a peace symbol.

Their classmates, Bailey Morgan and Reece Teetaert, decorated theirs with peace symbols and hearts.

"I just hope we can send this stuff and make people smile," Morgan said.

Once complete, the students kept one seed packet and picked an international embassy to send the other. The idea was to bring a smile to a child like them who live in areas of unrest. Eventually, Arsenault plans for the students who receive the seeds to plant those seeds, and care for the plant until they can cultivate their own seeds from the plant and send them back to the students in Canada.

The majority of students at Kirkcaldy chose to send their seed packets to children in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"We want the people to be safe and we want them to have nice flowers," Martens said. "We want the war to end there."

Teacher Myra Bridgeman says although the classroom regularly engages in conversations about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the recent devastation in Haiti, showing the students that their efforts can make a difference is an important lesson she hopes they’ll carry forever. Kirkcaldy was one of only two schools in Manitoba to participate, and Bridgeman says she’s happy the school is doing what it can to make a difference.

"A lot of these kids really think about how they can help. Whether or not they have the means and ways to do it, they think about it," Bridgeman said. "We’ve talked to them about how kids their age around the world have started causes and we talked about how it doesn’t matter how old you are, if you really want to make it work, you can always try."