Justice and Human Rights United States Project #41072

YEPE | Youth Empowerment To Prevent Extinction

by PEAC INSTITUTE A NJ NONPROFIT CORPORATION

YEPE | Youth Empowerment To Prevent Extinction

Project Report | Dec 17, 2020
2020 Winter Updates

By Rebecca Irby | Executive Director, PEAC Institute

Wow! What a year this has been!! 2020 started out feeling full of hope and promise for new things and so much opportunity. As we are all still figuring out our way through this pandemic and social awakening, I wanted to recap our year and share some of our processes.

02/07/2020 - Save the date for our NPT Youth Conference

We started the year very excited for the NPT Review Conference in New York. We were all working on the World Conference Youth Assembly. As the pandemic bore down, we realized we would have to pivot and change our approach. We decided to hold the youth conference still but now online.
05/02/2020 - World Conference Youth Assembly
- We held the Conference on May 2nd, a Saturday at 9 AM, and had over 300 participants from all over the world! We found we were able to engage even more people, and the conference felt more accessible. We wanted to make sure there was an interactive aspect to our conference but did not want to keep people online for hours, so we broke things up and had our breakout sessions two weeks later.
05/16/2020 - WCYA Breakout Sessions
- The breakouts were very successful and led to the fantastic partnerships that have continued to bring you cyber conferences.
06/19/2020 - Juneteenth | None of us are free until all of us are FREE!
- “Black History is important and needs to be taught! Black Joy needs to be celebrated! Everyday! The fight for freedom is nowhere close to over. Modern-day slavery is real.” Fannie Lou Hamer https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=342&v=XZYinmLyOxI&feature=youtu.be. We found it especially important to look inward as the Black Lives Matter protest continued to grow nationally and abroad. We Started having much-needed conversations with all the institutions we are apart of as well as run. Systemic racism is prevalent in ALL our systems, and it is up to ALL of us to help dismantle it. Those of us who are touched by racism the least are the very people who are needed to step up the most right now. We continue to hold space for difficult conversations and provide a space where solutions are discussed AND enacted.
08/02/2020 - Hiroshima 75th Memorial

Such an amazing day of conversation, art, and music! We honored the survivors of the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by looking at the history of the bomb, where we are today, and how we are on the verge of finally banning these abhorrent weapons. We spent the 10-hour broadcast at Universe City and highlighted all the amazing work they have been doing to bring food to their community, especially during the pandemic.
Watch the whole broadcast here: https://www.midheaven.network/h75m
08/06/2020 - 10 Hours of Music & Art | Hiroshima 75th Memorial
10/01/2020 - Learn how Tribal Communities use Traditional Knowledge to Tackle Modern Crisis

It was such an honor to organized Indigenous Day of Unity! We brought together elders and young activists worldwide to discuss land and nature-based solutions to climate change and decolonization.
Watch the whole broadcast here: https://www.midheaven.network/indigenous-unity
11/02/2020 - Meet This Week's Speakers
- We wanted to continue the conversation on decolonization and how we can contribute. We also thought it essential to discuss the US elections and our thoughts for the future. From the tile, you can tell we are very hopeful for the future, but we also understand all the hard work is about to start! We invite everyone to join us as we build our new world together.
- Watch the whole broadcast here: https://www.midheaven.network/still-hope-pt1
11/16/2020 - PEAC Press Release Nuclear Weapons to be declared Illegal January 22, 2021!
- It’s been a long, arduous climb to this point, but the win feels good! The passing of this treaty and entering into international law is the beginning. We now have to ensure that as money is divested from the nuclear industry, it is reallocated into public health and wellbeing, breaking down systemic racism, education, and green energy.
- Read the full Press Release here: https://www.peacinstitute.org/newsroom
12/09/2020 - Join Our International Human Rights Day Cyber Conference
- Our last conference was for International Human Rights Day. We took a look at how racism and colonialism affect human rights around the world. We revisited our conversation on hope and had a throwback lunchtime poetry hour.
- You can watch the whole broadcast here: https://www.midheaven.network/ihrd
Our next Cyber Conference will be in February - we’re going to be exploring sports and how athletes are changing the face of activism. Stay tuned!

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Aug 3, 2020
Aug 6th | 75th Memorial of the Atomic Bombings

By Rebecca Irby | Project Leader

Apr 1, 2020
COVID-19 Pandemic Changes Everything

By Chuck Johnson & Molly McGinty | IPPNW Program Director & IPPNW Program Associate

COVID-19 Pandemic Changes Everything -

giving the world a warning of what we face if climate and nuclear weapons issues aren’t seriously addressed

By Chuck Johnson, IPPNW Program Director & Molly McGinty, IPPNW Program Associate

On behalf of the Youth Empowerment to Prevent Extinction (YEPE) team, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), PEAC Institute, and Physicians for Social Responsibility – New York (PSRNY), thank you for your continued support of this important project! As you know, the goal of YEPE is to mobilize young people in the work of combating the dual threats of the climate crisis and the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Since the creation of YEPE, and despite the global curve ball thrown at everyone by the rapid spread of COVID-19 pandemic, we have made strides in making this goal a reality. In some ways, this pandemic has given the world a taste of the kind of chaos we can expect in the future if we do not attend to global issues great and small and cease wasting lives and effort in counterproductive activities.

Please see the excellent graphic below from our colleagues at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), illustrating the catastrophically bad choices being made by the United States, which is representative of similar figures for nuclear weapons states throughout the world.

World Conference 2020 canceled – moved to video conferences

YEPE was and is a key partner in planning the World Conference 2020: Youth Assembly previously scheduled for the first day of the World Conference to Abolish Nuclear Weapons; Resist and Reverse the Climate Crisis; For Social and Economic Justice.

The conference was scheduled to take place from April 24-26, 2020 at historic Riverside Church in New York, on the eve of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Review Conference (NPT RevCon) at the United Nations headquarters. Since the NPT RevCon and the in-person pre-conferences are now canceled due to COVID-19, we are making new arrangements for a series of interactive video-conferences. Dates, times, and agendas for these video-conferences will be announced very soon. We are also, tentatively planning, COVID-19 willing, to hold the in-person conferences before next year’s rescheduled NPT RevCon.

The many hours we have put in since October, planning and conducting outreach for the Youth Assembly, have been productive in developing strong working relationships with New York Peace Action and its network of 22 campus chapters, Buddhist peace organization Soka Gakkai International, and the New York office of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, whose staff is experienced, as a partner with IPPNW and PEAC Institute, in arranging for international conferences on nuclear weapons and war aimed at young people. Our most recent collaboration was in arranging for a group of fifteen young people from New York and Boston to attend ICAN’s Paris Youth Forum on February 14-15, 2020.

Participation of Boston-based university students was organized by former IPPNW Quaker Voluntary Service Fellow Eust Eustis, who remains active in helping organize campus follow up activity with the leaders who attended the Paris Forum as the nucleus of campus activity going forward. We anticipate growing collaboration in both Boston and New York, with our YEPE partners, focusing on the intersection of climate, justice, and nuclear weapons issues and the imperative in addressing them as illustrated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Young people get it: these global problems are linked

When the immediate chaos subsides, we plan to resume working with ICAN in following up on its Schools of Mass Destruction report, for which events planned for April of this year in Boston and elsewhere in the US have been temporarily delayed. We see great promise in the intersection of efforts to get universities to cease assisting and investing in nuclear weapons development and production, as part of an existing effort to end investment in climate-disrupting fossil fuel production. Our experience is that young people who understand the climate threat, easily grasp and embrace the severity of the threat of nuclear weapons when they have the facts presented to them. We look forward to seeing what creative ideas and campaigns they will create in the coming years as we continue to pursue this critical project.

Your contribution directly assisted in getting YEPE off the ground this year. We would not have been able to put as much time and resources into this event if it wasn't for your generous support. Thank you, again! We will follow up in future reports, regarding the success of the on-line Youth Assembly and other YEPE projects going forward.

Links:

Student interviews outside of the ICAN Paris Forum

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