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SGI News: Global activities for peace, education and culture

"1 World: The Power of Youth" at Columbine

Culture festival participants at Columbine High School [Averill Sehler]

More than 1,000 SGI-USA members and guests gathered at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, on March 21, for a culture festival titled "1 World: The Power of Youth."

SGI-USA youth from Colorado, Utah and Wyoming converged at the school for an event featuring a variety of dances, a rock band and a spoken word performance. At the same time, SGI-USA members from Littleton and the surrounding area donated books to the Columbine High School library, including works by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Walt Whitman.

In April 1999, 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School were gunned down by two schoolmates, who then turned their weapons on themselves. In response to this tragic act of violence, SGI-USA youth created the Victory Over Violence (VOV) initiative, a workshop-based program which aims to inspire young people to identify and counteract the root causes of violence in their daily lives. In the decade since, more than a million people have signed the VOV pledge, which calls for each individual to value their own lives, respect all life, actively pursue dialogue and inspire hope in others. A corresponding exhibition has toured schools and communities throughout the world.

At the festival, SGI-USA Youth Division Leader Nathan Gauer introduced SGI-USA's Rock the Era youth movement, which encourages youth to reveal their own greatness and promotes the belief that one person can make a profound difference. "Rock the Era is a time when countless youth are standing up in the reality of American society, united with their mentor, to transform the land in which we live," Mr. Gauer said, emphasizing the importance of bringing this message to a site that has such tragic symbolism.

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