“My challenge to you tonight is to heed this CALL TO PEACE, and to answer it in your own powerful, resounding way. Invent new ways to serve the world and its citizens. You don’t have to be overseas to bring us closer to world peace; you can plant the seeds of world peace in your own back yard. Do anything you can dream up; and never stop doing!”
Our Quote of the Week challenges us to be peacemakers using the unique tools and qualities we each have developed in our own lives. It reminds us of a truth that we sometimes find difficult to accept but that we must work to embrace: that peace begins with each of us.
Sargent Shriver made this call to peace in his 2002 Speech at the National Peace Corps Association’s 41st Annual Celebration Dinner, less than one year after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Even being at the advanced age of 85 at the time, Shriver demonstrates with this short speech that he understands the contemporary world. The speech also reveals his continued commitment to service, peacebuilding, and diplomacy that motivated him throughout the 1960s when he had the roles of head of the Peace Corps, the War on Poverty, and US Ambassador to France.
As our society continues to deal with violence, conflict, and polarization, let us commit to using our individual spheres of influence to create a more peaceful, compassionate world.
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