This report was filed by the Youth Federation for World Peace, a Global Peace Festival partnering organization.

An innovative peace festival and service initiative is creating the framework for peace in war-torn Mindanao.

Mindanao, Philippines - The thirty-year-old conflict in Mindanao province in the Philippines has never commanded the world’s attention, despite the massive scale of violence and loss of life. Since 1969, when the fighting between Muslim separatists and the armed forces began under the Marcos regime, the Mindanao conflict has left 160,000 dead and displaced some two million people.

Mie, Japan - On May 17 approximately 180 people gathered to clean Ishigaki Ike Park in Mie, Japan. It had been raining for two days until the early morning of May 17. Fortunately the sun came out from 8am and it became a hot day by the time the event began.

Global Peace Festival in Mie’s project, Service for Peace @ Ishigaki Ike Park, held a cleaning event with Universal Peace Federation, United Filipinos for Peace and Advancement (UFPA), and Suzuka Kameyama Catholic Church Community. The nations represented were Japanese, Philippines, which were the two majorities and Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Republic of Moldova.

Kenya - In a growing grassroots movement for peace following the disputed 2007 Kenya presidential election, YFWP-Kenya co-sponsored a soccer tournament and service initiative in the western Matunda area that brought together some 70,000 people under the banner “Come Together to Reason Together.”

Matunda is a cosmopolitan district with a population of more than 200,000, representing all tribes in Kenya. Due to strong tribal attachments, the region was particularly unsettled by the violence, economic disruption, and political controversies that attended the divisive election.

Japan - On May 6, 2009 a group of volunteers went for their usual routine in search for plastic bottle caps in the town. The volunteers asked shops and collected bottle caps from rubbish bins beside vending machines in front of the shops. Knowing the volunteers come around, people who do not know where to take the bottle caps bring them to the volunteers.

The volunteer group, Fukuoka wo genki ni suru kai, began collecting bottle caps since the bottle cap recycling campaign during Global Peace Festival Japan 2008. Global Peace Festival Japan 2008 encouraged participants to bring plastic bottle caps to the venue and collected over 1,100,000 bottle caps last November. 

During GPF-Japan 2008 five organizations were chosen among many Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs) working towards world peace and were awarded and given grants. NPO 2050, one of the five organizations awarded, sent an acknowledgment and a report about its current project.

NPO 2050 is a Non-Profit Organization that aims to raise awareness of people to think what the world would be like by the year 2050.