Peace X Peace Community Members
Worldwide
“Respect is a two way street, not something you can just move to another location.”
It’s difficult to turn on the news or listen to the radio without hearing some reference to, or full-fledged debate about, the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” in New York City. Talk-show commentators offer sound bites on religious freedom, Islam, and/or terrorism (depending on where you’re tuned in to) while street protesters shout about “hallowed ground.”
What is rarely heard amidst the uproar are nuanced responses, marked by respect, compassion …

Sowmya Ayyar
USA
“My technological idea is simple: help women empower themselves and transform their own lives.”
Yesterday, I attended the Center for Science, Technology and Society’s Global Social Benefit Incubator presentations at Santa Clara University in California and was inspired again to find or create a technology to help others with. I searched my skill set for unique technologies that I could offer. Only one came to mind: yoga.
What is technology, anyway? For you and me, it’s about the internet, mobile phones, and lots of …

Kathy Garms
USA
“Elkader’s founders had no way of knowing in 1846, when they named a new settlement on the banks of the Turkey River in northeast Iowa after a widely admired Arab freedom fighter, that they were setting the stage for international learning experiences.”
Who could imagine that a small rural town in America’s heartland – Elkader, Iowa – would be remembering a 19th century world-renowned Muslim hero? Yet, that has become reality through the bonding of a tiny dot on a map and a book. Thanks to John Kiser’s biography, Commander of the …

by Patricia Smith Melton
Founder, Peace X Peace
Editor, Sixty Years, Sixty Voices: Israeli and Palestinian Women
Salma Jabou describes herself, first, as an Iraqi woman, and then as an engineer, founder of an educational center for war widows in Baghdad, Advisor to the President of Iraq on women’s issues, wife of the Deputy Foreign Minister of Iraq, and mother of a grown son and daughter. She has been a leader of the Iraqi women’s movement for 30 years, starting when it was a secret network during the Hussein regime.
When …