✨ Youth Voices Blog
“From Fear to Friendship: My Journey in Building Peace”
By Ayesha Rahman, 20, Bangladesh
When I was younger, peace was just a word in my school textbook. I thought peace meant no fighting, no war. But as I grew up in Khulna, I realized that peace is about something deeper—it’s about how we treat each other every day.
Last year, I joined a youth-led initiative called Green Peace Clubs. Our mission was simple: to link environmental action with building harmony in our community. At first, I wondered—what does planting trees have to do with peace? But I quickly learned that when people fight over scarce resources like land or water, conflict grows. By protecting nature, we also protect communities.
🌱 Planting Seeds of Change
We began with ten schools. Each school formed a club of students, teachers, and volunteers. Our activities ranged from mangrove planting to recycling drives. But the most powerful part wasn’t the trees we planted—it was the friendships that grew among us. Hindu, Muslim, and Christian students worked side by side, caring for the same seedlings.
One day, a classmate told me, “I never thought I’d be working with people from different backgrounds like this. Now, I can’t imagine us apart.” That moment reminded me that peace often starts with small, shared actions.
🎨 Creativity as a Bridge
We also used art to spread our message. I still remember painting a mural with the words: “Climate Justice = Peace Justice.” As we painted, passersby stopped to ask questions. Some joined in. A little boy even dipped his tiny hands in green paint and stamped them on the wall, giggling. That wall wasn’t just a mural—it became a symbol of unity.
💡 What I Learned
Through this journey, I discovered three lessons:
- Peace is practical – it’s not only about dialogues but also about solving real problems together.
- Youth can lead – we don’t need to wait for elders or politicians; our actions matter.
- Friendship is power – when we connect across religions, classes, and identities, we build resilience that no conflict can break.
📢 My Message to Other Youth
To every young person reading this: don’t wait for the “perfect” opportunity to start building peace. Look around you—your school, your street, your social media. There are chances everywhere to create understanding and harmony. Even the smallest step—a conversation, a smile, an idea—can ripple outwards.
Today, when I look at the mangroves we planted, I see more than trees. I see roots of peace—growing strong, spreading wide, and holding us together.
✨ Opinion Piece
“The Bench Under the Banyan Tree”
By Kiran Mehta, 19, India
Every evening, after school, I sit on the old stone bench under the banyan tree in my town square. It has cracks, moss creeping on its sides, and roots weaving around it like stories that refuse to end.
At first, I sat there alone—listening to traffic, children’s laughter, and sometimes, angry arguments between shopkeepers. But slowly, this bench became something else.
One day, a boy named Ali sat next to me. We were from different schools, different faiths. We didn’t speak much. We just shared silence. The next week, Priya joined us, bringing her sketchbook. She began drawing the banyan tree, and we teased her because her sketches always gave the tree more branches than it had.
Soon, the bench was never empty. We came from different religions, castes, and even languages. Sometimes we argued fiercely—about cricket, about politics, about whose turn it was to buy chai. But we always came back to the bench.
🌳 A Small Space, A Big Lesson
I realized something: this broken bench was teaching us peace. Not through speeches or big programs, but through the everyday act of sitting together.
When Ali’s cousin faced discrimination at school, we didn’t just sympathize—we marched together to the principal’s office. When Priya’s home was damaged in the floods, we all helped repaint her walls. When I struggled with exams, they listened to my panic without judgment.
This was justice in its simplest form: not letting one person carry the weight alone.
💭 Why This Matters
In our country, we hear big words—“secularism,” “harmony,” “unity in diversity.” But those words only live when we practice them. For me, peace is not just a dream of nations. It is the everyday choice of young people to sit together, share space, and not give up on each other.
📢 My Opinion
I believe that if every community had its “banyan bench”—a place where differences are allowed, where voices are heard, and where no one is excluded—then we wouldn’t need to only dream of peace. We would live it.
So my message is simple: find your bench. It could be a corner of your classroom, a WhatsApp group, or a park bench under an old tree. Fill it with conversations, art, laughter, and even disagreements. Because justice is not just about courts, and peace is not only about treaties—it’s about young people deciding to sit together, again and again.
And maybe, just maybe, one cracked stone bench can change the way a whole town breathes.