Celebrating the Global Family Peace Tree

Peace Tree Day is an annual festival for children, youth and their families to share their cultures and faiths and to celebrate peace and diversity.  Created in 2005 by Mitra Sen, Peace Tree Day was first celebrated in Toronto and Vaughn, Ontario on June 1^st of that year. 

Eleven years later it is still being celebrated and has spread to other areas of Canada as well as  India, Pakistan, Israel, Moscow, Buenos Aires, Sydney, Germany, South Africa, England, Taiwan, Korea, Scotland, Dubai, France and Cyprus.

Mitra Sen is a teacher with the Toronto District School Board who also creates socially relevant films that portray young people dealing with diversity and peace.  Sen tries to inspire youth to create social change by taking action through intercultural celebrations that foster respect and peace.  Her films have won twenty-five international awards.

Sen got the inspiration for Peace Tree Day when she was making the film The Peace Tree (see the trailer) which was about two girls who wanted to celebrate each other’s holidays.  Sen wanted to create a festival that celebrated all cultures and faiths that would unite people.

Peace Tree Day is celebrated every June 1^st in classrooms, homes, hospitals and public spaces.  The kids work together to create symbols of peace from their diverse cultures and faiths which they hang on a living tree or on the bare branches of a tree arranged inside.  These symbols could be a dove, an elephant, the moon and star, or the Hindu symbol for Om for example. The work can be done and added throughout the school year, gradually growing in diversity and beauty as kids add symbols of peace, messages or the word peace in various languages to the tree. 

The culmination of this combined effort on June 1^st is Peace Tree Day, a multicultural festival including food, dancing, music and other cultural activities that allow the kids to share their cultures and gain respect and understanding of the cultures of their schoolmates.  This festival can also be used as a fund raiser for kids in war torn areas of the world.  This empowers the children to create change in the world by working together and gives them an experience of the strength and beauty of diversity.

The Peace Tree Day website includes a wealth of resources for teachers and parents including songs, ideas, videos, stencils and more.  The pictures of peace trees created by children in various parts of the world are a feast for the eyes.  They are created by children who understand that they are part of the global family.  If you want to see the world through their eyes, then take a look.

“There’s just a sense of peace that you can only feel under the shade of a tree,” said Mitra in a recent interview for the Metro News.  Sen added that she sees the Peace tree as “a sign that we all grew from the same roots branching out.”