Helping Change the World
DU students work for positve community impact
It's easy to see how the Dalai Lama and the Archbishop Desmond Tutu can serve as mentors to a younger generation.
But what about Blanca Elena Trejo?
The DU sophomore from Denver and 150 other DU students took the opportunity to provide teenagers with a good role model and rubbed elbows with people who've impacted their communities in the most profound ways when they volunteered to serve as a mentor to high school students visiting DU for PeaceJam.
"It's an honor to be able to say I met all those Peace Prize winners," Blanca says. "That's impressive and it's a good experience for every DU student."
PeaceJam's 10th Anniversary Celebration, which took place at venues around the University of Denver Sept. 15-17, 2006, was the largest gathering of Nobel Peace Prize winners to occur in the United States.
During PeaceJam, 3,000 participants from around the world learned, through team-building games and classroom sessions with the Nobel winners, how to make a difference in their lives and their communities. They explored and discussed topics such as violence, racism and reconciliation.
Many of DU's student volunteers joined PeaceJam during high school or, like Olga Tunga, served as a mentor at a PeaceJam conference in the past.
Olga, a DU senior from Houston, wanted to encourage the teenagers she mentored to talk with their peers about the necessity of peace in the world. It's part of the reason she was excited DU opened its doors to the PeaceJam Foundation for the event.
"I know that I am privileged and blessed to be able to have the PeaceJam event take place at DU and for me to be a part of it," she says. "The Nobel Laureates have made their mark by shaping the course of history and showing the world that peace is a very real possibility."
In addition to the Dalai Lama and Tutu, Nobel winners Shirin Ebadi, Jody Williams, Oscar Arias, Mairead Corrigan, Betty Williams, Rigoberta Menchu Tum, Jose Ramos-Horta and Adolfo Perez Esquivel were on the DU campus.
While here, the Nobel Peace Prize winners asked the world community to work for positive social change in a historic global call-to-action.
But at DU, students had already taken action to improve the world around them. On the first of day of the celebration, DU students and PeaceJam participants planted hundreds of trees in one of Denver's poorest neighborhoods as part of Denver's "Plant a Million Trees" program.
Updated on Nov. 1, 2006