Drawing Hope is a trans-local peace project that delivers messages of hope through children’s artwork, fostering intergenerational dialogue.
American Friends Service Committee
with the Quaker UN Office
United States of America
American Friends Service Committee works for a just, peaceful, and sustainable world free of violence, inequality, and oppression. We join with people and partners worldwide to meet urgent community needs, challenge injustice, and build peace. AFSC pursues systemic change. In our work for a better future, we focus on three strategic goals—just and sustainable peace, just economies, and just responses to migration. Guided by the Quaker belief in the divine light of each person, AFSC works with people of all faiths and backgrounds to challenge unjust systems and promote lasting peace.
The Quaker United Nations Office promotes justice, peace and sustainability at the United Nations. Through different areas of work in Geneva and New York, we seek to ensure that the UN system and community of nations support and uphold the dignity of all, so that justice and peace can flourish, and our shared home can be nurtured. Since 1948, QUNO has been engaged in quiet, strategic advocacy. Our priorities are based on the concerns of Quakers worldwide, and are shaped by Quaker values and commitments to peace and non-violence, justice, equality, and stewardship of the environment.
As a Quaker organization, AFSC emphasizes the need for working across geographies o promote peace with justice. The voices of the children continue to inspire us in this work to build hope for future generations through trans-local partnerships and solidarity.
- Jennifer Deibert, DPRK Program Director, AFSC.
This exhibit comes as a pivotal moment. Last year, nations agreed to a Pact for the Future, and this year, as the UN turns 80, the UN community is taking a hard look at its role since its inception following the Second World War. Since 1945, the community of nations has worked diligently to strengthen opportunities for international cooperation, collaboration, and dialogue as a means to address the challenges facing communities and our planet. More recently, we have seen a few very powerful countries turn their backs on and, in some cases, actively undermine the principles of international law and the multilateral project. At a time when cooperation, collaboration, and dialogue are needed more than ever to bridge divides and solve collective problems, these actors are going back to earlier models and assumptions that relied on power, brute force, and exploitation. This exhibit provides us with a reminder, coming from young people themselves, of the importance of the UN’s original vision as a forum for dialogue, cooperation, and collective solutions.
- Sarah Clarke, Director and UN Representative, Quaker UN Office