Service Snapshots: Building Common Ground

Generation Peace Academy teams are traveling and providing service work in Barbados, Panama, Trinidad, the Dominican Republic, and Peru. They are currently participating in a service project in Trinidad and Tobago.

“Every stroke of paint represents my hope for peace in this community,” said Harumi Miyakawa, one of the GPA team members, as they put a fresh coat of paint on an internet cafe in Trinidad and Tobago. Before getting to work on the project, the GPA team was given a tour around the small town of Mon Repo. They were welcomed by members of the community and able to look at some of the projects that the previous GPA groups had worked on. The internet cafe was not just about creating a valuable service for the town, but, the guide explained, there is a larger vision for peace. “Our project’s goal is to help solve the tension between Mon Repo and the neighboring community by creating an internet cafe and setting up many banners with messages of peace and hope,” one participant explained. The team helped to clean the building, prepare the yard for the creation of a peace garden, and paint the poles that would soon fly the banners with messages of peace.

This was the first project the team undertook after days of internal study with Rev. Moon’s Autobiography. According to the participants, this deepened their experience and helped them to bring their whole hearts to the project. As one of them noted, “I could feel that I’m not just here to work for the specific communities we are visiting, but I’m here to work and fight for a vision of a better, more peaceful world.” The hope for Mon Repo and its neighbors is that they can all come to the cafe to relax and share some common ground in a peaceful environment. The GPA team was excited to finally kick off their first service project in Trinidad and Tobago, but even more so to bring some value to a community and lift the hearts of the people.