Four Rose Rees winners share their views on peace

The Rose Rees Peace Awards commemorates Rose Rees, who died in 1935 while serving as president of NCJW's Minneapolis Section and founder of the World Affairs Council of Minneapolis.

Below are essays from four of the 19 winners being honored on Wednesday at an awards luncheon. Click the audio player to hear the essay read by the author.

Mohamed Samatar - Southwest High School

There is enough room on the planet.

There are enough books for every student. Enough food for every child. Enough medicine for every member of this global fraternity we call Mankind. Some say that World Peace is idealistic, that it is utopian. To me, World Peace is instead something attainable, something that is only impeded by native greed. This greed keeps the child hungry, the student uneducated, the ailing ill.

The lack of adequate water is not inevitable. There is water in the earth. There are people who are thirsty. Absent, only, is the determination on the part of those with the shovels. I asked my school to stand up and provide water. We raised $20,000 to drill 10 wells in the Horn of Africa. This is how world peace will work. Not through utopian, idealistic philosophy, but through the well-equipped meeting eye-to-eye with those in need, and getting up not for personal gain but for change.

Hai Nguyen-Tran - Richfield High School

Every Sunday, I take the city bus to the Children's Hospital in Minneapolis, where I serve as a volunteer. The majority of the bus rides have been uneventful. However, one Sunday, I rode the bus home with a very opinionated woman.

As soon as I stepped on the bus, she looked at me and started to make loud racist remarks like "people from China are all Communists and should go back home to China," or "if you live in America, you should know how to speak English." These comments angered me. She had no right to make these remarks and treat me like that in front of the entire bus. The whole bus ride home was uncomfortable for me, and I wanted to scream at the woman and tell her that I was Vietnamese and that I was born and raised in America where I grew up speaking English along with Vietnamese. But I knew that yelling at her would fuel her anger and might put me in danger.

I chose to ignore her. After some time, the woman stopped making her racist statements, which improved my ride back home.

Some may argue that I could have stood up to the woman and spoken my mind. But I felt that I could promote my message, advocating for the acceptance of diversity, in other ways.

Peace and understanding mean striking a balance between differences and similarities. Each person is unique in background, experience and opinions. These differences make the world a more vibrant place and enrich all our lives. They should be acknowledged and appreciated.

One way to do this is through art. Art allows people to express their creativity and uniqueness, but at the same time can bring people together. Art is a universal language that allows us to express emotions anyone can interpret. It is a bridge connecting people.

I dedicate my time to teaching a traditional Vietnamese dance group to educate people about Vietnamese culture. Each person and culture has distinct characteristics, but at the same time, many similarities. It is important to celebrate the differences, but recognize the commonalities that bring us together.

I hope that people -- and that woman on the bus -- someday realize that though we might not look the same, we all share common characteristics and thus should be more accepting of others.

Jacob Sandry - Bloomington Jefferson

Mohandas Gandhi once proclaimed that, "... if we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children." I believe that my generation will be one that will fight the injustices of this world. My generation doesn't automatically agree with ingrained ideas of how the world should be. Increasingly, we have new ideas about what the world can be.

When I was a child, my rabbi always said that the primary ideal of Judaism is that of Tikun Olam, or repairing the world. To me this is the primary goal in my life. I get distressed whenever I see inequalities around me and I am impassioned to change them.

My plan for bringing peace to the world starts with how I treat the people I come in contact with every day. All high school students are coping with challenges and tribulations, and often all they need is someone to listen to them or make them smile. Peace can be a great movement, but it can also be spread on an everyday basis from person to person.

I think there can be no peace until people understand each other, and this is why next year I'm taking a year to travel to Latin America, to perfect my Spanish, and Ethiopia, to learn about East African culture. I plan to work and volunteer on a political campaign in the interim to save money and get political experience.

I want to dedicate my life to working for others. My vision of success focuses not on having material possessions but on helping a lot of people. By sharing my dreams and aspirations with others, I hope to inspire peace in the people around me so that they, too, can be peacemakers in the world.

Maria Thomson - Minnetonka High School

World peace is a cliche. It's the typical 2nd-grade response to "your dream for the future," the ten-point answer in beauty pageants, the theme of many Christmas songs and the prompt for many extra-curricular essays -- such as this one.

World peace often seems perceived as "a lovely idea," a concept that will never seriously be considered attainable. This is its own biggest impediment. People continue to believe peace can only be achieved through giant social and governmental reforms. So we wait around, expecting those with power to take control of these issues, since they are capable of doing so and we are not.

Perhaps we should shift our focus toward individuals. What if, instead of concerning ourselves with how to make China get along with Tibet, we concerned ourselves with how to pay for the education of two or even three kids in China or Tibet?

Perhaps the concept of world peace is so big and so glorious that it causes us to forget that humans underlie it all. Humans, like me, are the ones affected by war and conflict. Why don't we stop waiting for an official decree of peace and actually start bettering people's lives, one by one, to whatever extent we are capable?

As human beings, we have an innate responsibility to help all other human beings asking for help, regardless of how distant their problems may seem. The boy needing water in Haiti depends on me for aid, even though I will never get to know his face; the teacher in Uganda depends on me for books, even though I will never meet her students. Only through recognizing and acting upon our unspoken responsibilities can we truly demonstrate that we are ready for world peace.

I have not yet graduated from high school, but I have already been told of the path to disappointment that awaits me in college: as a hopeful and impassioned student, I'll join dozens of anti-genocide, pro-peace, anti-poverty groups.

I'll live four years in a liberal bubble that will raise my hopes, only to have them shattered when I graduate and enter "the real world." I've been warned ... but not convinced. If people truly, deeply believed peace could be achieved, wouldn't we work harder for it?