GPFF’s character education program hit new heights in Kenya during this past week, a week when the country signed its new constitution into law. 120 teachers from 33 schools successfully completed our Character Competencies training program. The schools will implement the program in the coming academic year reaching a total of 25,000 students.

Most of the schools sent three teachers to the training, including several deputy principals. Langata High School, some of whose teachers had already undergone the training, sent a total of twenty more teachers including the Principal. Langata serves part of Nairobi’s Kibera slum district, which is a part of the constituency represented by Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

A GPFF advance team, led by chairman Dr. Hyun Jin Moon, met last Tuesday 29 June with Kenyan Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka in Nairobi. The meeting was one of several with political and religious leaders, including President Kibaki, to make preparations for the upcoming Global Peace Festival and Convention in Nairobi this November.

At the meeting, Vice President Musyoka agreed to be chief guest at the International Youth Leadership Conference (IYLC), one of the three major events GPFF is holding in November. The Vice President is especially interested to encourage young Kenyan professionals to look beyond their own career success to contribute to a new Kenya. Kenyans will vote on August 4 in a referendum on a draft constitution that will have huge significance for the country’s future.

President Mwai Kibaki has commended the Global Peace Festival Foundation for promoting peace in the world.

Saying he welcomed the foundation's decision to choose Nairobi as the venue for the biennial global peace convention scheduled for 17 to 20 November this year, President Kibaki assured that the Government will provide all the necessary support to ensure the convention succeeds.

"My Government is pleased to partner with you in hosting this important conference aimed at spreading the message of peace to all humanity," the President said.

The Rivers of Peace project, begun by GPFF in August 2008 with the cleanup of the Nairobi River, entered a new phase Monday 28 June with the kickoff of a major restoration of the Nairobi Dam, in which GPFF is cooperating with the Kenya government.

Before addressing the gathered volunteers and Nairobi media, Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga and GPFF Chairman Dr. Hyun Jin Moon squeezed into the cab of a back-hoe that scooped up some of the water hyacinth that covers most of the surface of the dam are and dropped it into a waiting truck to be carted away.

President Mwai Kibaki has been named the Patron of the 2010 Global Peace Convention to be held in Nairobi in November. At the same time, Prime Minister Raila Odinga was named the Patron of the 2010 Global Peace Festival.

Kenya’s ethnically diverse Rift Valley province has experienced unrest since the introduction of large-scale colonial farming in the 1950s. The divisions flared into open violence following the disputed presidential elections in 2007. In 2008, the Global Peace Festival arrived in Kenya, bringing a model of interfaith and inter-cultural peacebuilding through cultural celebration and community service that is winning wide acceptance among concerned Kenyans.

In the Rift Valley GPF partners have launched ambitious character education programs addressing the roots of conflict, which have been brought to elementary and high schools as well as presented in home-based settings. The GPF-supported Sports for Peace program adopts a similar perspective, sponsoring athletic competitions that involve all ethnic groups and applying principles of good sportsmanship as a form of peace education.

On February 16, Nairobi Mayor Geoffrey Majiwa joined a coalition of prominent national youth organizations and religious, business, and elected leaders to mark the launch of the 2010 Global Peace Festival and Convention, with a renewed commitment to advance the restoration of the endangered Nairobi River.

“I am proud to support the Convention and will engage the City Council to provide its support,” Mayor Majiwa said at the inaugural event, joining some 300 youth volunteers who planted trees along the Nairobi River as part of the restoration initiative.

Kenya has won the bid to host the 2010 Global Peace Festival and Convention, to be held in Nairobi on November 17-20. International peacemakers including religious, NGO, youth, business, governmental, and other civil society leaders will participate in the Convention on the foundation of regional Global Peace Festivals (GPF) to be convened in Asia, the Americas and Africa.

The announcement was made on February 16 in Nairobi with the strong endorsement of President Hon. Mwai Kibaki in a meeting with Global Peace Festival Foundation Chairman Dr. Hyun Jin Moon and distinguished national host committee members.