We Cannot Change Others, We Can Change Ourselves
We are grateful for these students from Vision Academy who recently gave their time to volunteer at Peace Learning Center because they believe peace matters We Cannot Change Others, We Can Change Ourselves These are tough times for peacemakers. Locally, nationally and internationally violence and intimidation face us daily. The recent atrocities committed in Paris, Beirut, and Baghdad shocked and saddened all of us. While we cannot change others, we can change ourselves. Working for peace within ourselves helps us spread peace to family, friends, coworkers and the larger community. We are eternally grateful for your support because everyday Peace Learning Center's facilitators and volunteers witness personal change with preschool through high school students, parents, teachers and community members as we help each person find the peace and peacemaker within. When they are first exposed to PLC programs, many struggling teenagers believe they will not survive beyond 25 years of age, so they live with no hope for tomorrow. Tragically it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for way too many. "My mother worked three jobs and my dad was in prison," a 19 year-old young man told me at a meeting. "She wouldn't let me go outside to play so I watched TV all the time seeing all the things other people had. When I went outside at 14, I got a gun because I knew that was how I was going to get that stuff for me." After spending time in prison,