Peace Partners Collaboration with Celebrate Life

A Celebrate Life film screening (image courtesy of Celebrate Life)

Ronnie Cray, Peace Partners' Peace Education Programme lead volunteer, describes some collaborations with Celebrate Life in recent months.

Peace Partners has established an ongoing partnership with Celebrate Life. They are the community interest company, and the filmmakers who produced the ‘Power to Change’ documentary film. We work in collaboration with them to screen the documentary film, bringing it to various places all around the country.

The documentary film helps in the promotion of The Prem Rawat Foundation’s (TPRF) non-religious, non-political, media-based Peace Education Programme (PEP), through which people can find their own inner resources and the possibility of personal peace. It tells the real stories of five Londoners who go through loss and violence. The PEP is highlighted in the documentary film as instrumental in their transformation to find resilience and hope.

The screening of the documentary film in St. Austell and Redruth, Cornwall, in May, led to a PEP ‘taster’ session being done in June.
A screening in Manchester in July, led to a senior manager for the children's and young people's charity Power 2 asking for a PEP taster session. This was arranged for her whole team, and this led to the full 10-week PEP sessions beginning early in December 2023.

In October, the film was screened at Catford Mews, a community hub in Catford, South East London. Peace Partners provided the funding to make this event possible. The event was attended by over 30 people, including the makers of the documentary and the director of Celebrate Life. Volunteers from Peace Partners and several other long-term TPRF supporters attended the screening. A PEP information table was provided, and several PEP folding cards and leaflets were given out to attendees. One member of the cast performed two of his poems, including the one seen in the documentary film. He also participated in the Q&A that followed, answering questions from the audience, alongside the film makers.
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Also in October, the documentary was screened at Exeter University at their Tremough Campus in Cornwall. Six students expressed their interest in the PEP for schools and universities afterwards at the information table, six more students were interviewed by Celebrate Life, and one student expressed an interest in helping with PEP. A separate report on the event has been included in this eBulletin (see above). Our partnering with Celebrate Life has made it possible for Peace Partners to work towards obtaining Exeter University’s permission to start the in-person PEP for schools and universities sessions on their campus in Cornwall in the early months of 2024.

We are looking forward to even more opportunities to continue the ongoing collaboration with Celebrate Life in the new year.