Events

Regent College and the Regent College Student Association are pleased to host Elie Pritz for a lunchtime lecture on Peace Heroes, a curriculum designed to empower students as agents of positive change in their communities. 

"Peace Heroes in Unexpected Places: How children in Palestine, Israel, Iraq, Burundi, Kenya and South Africa are Changing the World"

Peace Heroes is a dynamic and interactive school program that uses stories of real-life women and men from every continent across the globe to instill in students and teachers alike the values and ethos of peace while giving them the tools to be proactive peacemakers. Ultimately Peace Heroes empowers students to become agents of profound and positive change in their own specific context as well as in the world at large. 

The curriculum was born in 2013 when a Palestinian school in Jerusalem decided to purposefully teach its students peace in an environment marked by violence. Our aim was to challenge the prevailing ethos of militaristic heroism by introducing students to a different kind of hero—one who prioritizes peace as a way of living over and above everything else. We told them stories of people who have stood up to bring peace and wholeness to situations of conflict and injustice all over the world without the use of violence. Through these stories, students began to internalize that they too can be these kinds of heroes—that peace begins here, with me. 

The program was such a success that we decided to extend it to other schools as well. In 2016 we launched an extensive pilot program that included more schools in Israel and Palestine as well as schools in Kenya, South Africa, Burundi, and two refugee camps in Northern Iraq/Kurdistan. 

Peace Heroes was written and developed by a Trinity Western University alumna, Elie Pritz, who was born and raised in Israel.