Peace Walk

planned by 8th graders, took place Sunday, September 18 at Back Cove

In an effort to support and bring awareness to International Peace Day, Friends School of Portland, a preschool- 8th grade Quaker School, and Clark Insurance sponsored "Portland Walks for Peace."

Four eighth grade students at Friends School, Madeline Curtis, Tristram Howard, Mel McClure-Chute, and Annie Gott, devised the idea for Portland Walks for Peace. 

"When we watched a video on the history of International Peace Day, we realized as a group that nothing to bring the whole community together for this great cause was happening. We wanted to change that," says Gott.

Part of the efforts of the walk were to raise money for Peace One Day, an organization that uses Peace Day as a platform to help provide relief to poor and war-torn countries. These places would otherwise be unreachable and dangerous to approach without the cease-fire that controlling rebel groups agree to on that one day.  

"There is nowhere else I would rather have this walk. Portland is made up of such a proactive group of caring people that I think will really support our cause. We hope that once people attend our walk they will be inspired to create their own acts of peace on the actual day [the 21st of September]," Gott says.