Your gift will be added to Ploughshares’ new Mother’s Day Peace Fund, which will operate year round to support projects aimed at making the world safer and more peaceful for children and families, projects such as these:
Lisa Schirch has worked in every region of the world, engaging people in war-torn societies in efforts to transform conflict and rebuild their communities. So it is with keen authority and compassion that, as director of the 3D Security Initiative, she presses lawmakers to adopt a more balanced approach to security, one where development and diplomacy are the first resort to prevent violence, so that defense can truly be the last. She has just returned from the Middle East with a clear message: to curb violence in Iraq, it is time to withdraw U.S. troops, support international peacekeeping, and provide humanitarian aid for the nearly 5 million Iraqis who have been displaced by the war.
Zainab Cheema, who writes passionately about protecting the environment, inherited her commitment to working for a better world from her mother, physician Naveela Saleem. Both are active participants in a unique partnership, the Muslim-Christian Initiative, which mobilizes members of mosques, churches and community organizations to speak out for the elimination of nuclear weapons. "The Muslim and Christian traditions are unambiguous on the sanctity of human life, on the protection of all forms of creation," they agree, "and on our responsibility to future generations."
In 1983 Marylia Kelley learned that the park where her son played was contaminated with radioactive plutonium from the secret gated facility nearby. The facility was the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, one of two locations where all U.S. nuclear weapons are designed. Kelley organized neighbors and lab workers to investigate and speak out against the environmental hazards posed by the lab. Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment (CAREs), with Kelley’s continued leadership, has become a leader among groups working all over the world to protect their communities from the poisonous legacy of nuclear weapons, and to eliminate them once and for all.
Soupheeha Dwood Heshean Eshebat was thirteen years old when she lost her leg in a landmine blast near her home in the Jordan Valley. Now, thanks to Survivor Corps and its work in Israel, Palestine and Jordan, the mother of four daughters has become a role model for other survivors, helping them rebuild their lives and speak out for an end to the conflicts that surround them. A global community of people whose lives have been shattered by conflict, Survivor Corps transforms survivors into powerful advocates for peaceful change.
Photos by James Gordon, FORUSA and cambodiatrust.