On 20 July, ‘IPYG Cultural Exchange Day’ was held by International Peace Youth Group(IPYG) and Armenian Progressive Youth(APY) in attendance with about 25 volunteers in Yerevan of Armenia.
APY was established by Erik Ghazaryan, Maria Simonyan, Grigor Yeritsyan who had a purpose about implementing the empowerment of youth through the cooperation with global youth network – IPYG.
Mr. Henri Sahakyan, APY’s international project manager, said, “This event was held to realize the need for mutual respect without conflict in the world. In addition, it will encourage young people’s peaceful consciousness and call for voluntary and continuous peace activities.”
Particularly, as a result of discussing the theme of ‘ The attitude that we should have in our multi-cultural era,’ the participants said that they should make a social atmosphere so that they can solve the conflicts through dialogues among people from different backgrounds.
Participants of this event also had time to write a peace letter to the president of Armenia, hoping that principles of peacebuilding at the local, national and international levels can be carried out with government support, which is designated in the Declaration of Peace and Cessation of War(DPCW).
The Peace Letter Campaign is led by global youth as an IPYG’s peace project to advocate collaborate efforts of peacebuilding based on the DPCW, which addresses international cooperation for peace including conflict prevention, resolution and support from civil society.
Mr. Pirijanian, a member of APY, said, “We need to respect for their actions. Peace and harmony should be leading at the first.”
And Mr. Marine Harutyunyan, who attended the meeting, asked, “In my opinion, peace is very important. We should support peace because it is in compliance with our national identity as a citizen. I ask you to take some actions to stop the war.”
Since 2016, 1.5 million people in 176 countries showed their support for the DPCW by their signature or letters to national leaders.
In Armenia, to promote a cultural approach to peacebuilding, promotional events for cultural exchange including Taekwondo (Korean national and the Olympic sport) and Armenian tradition has been held by IPYG.
After this event, IPYG will progress the DPCW into the legally binding document form campaign of the peace law with the peace letter and support signing activity.
Furthermore, in September this year, ‘the 5th Anniversary world peace event’ will be held in the countries of the world and the second peace culture event will be held in Armenia.