By Jared Gay
World Peace Day celebrates its 30th anniversary as a day dedicated to strengthening the ideals of peace all around the world.
This annual event will be broadcast Wednesday online at PeaceDay.tv.
Steve Fantl, broadcast director and co-founder of PeaceDay.tv, said a variety of international events will be broadcast throughout the day on the website.
“It’s a day of ceasefire and nonviolence around the world that is honored by the Taliban, NATO and many warring parties,” Fantl said. “The significance of it is that aid organizations can get food and medical help and computers delivered on the day without their activists being harmed.”
Fantl said the objective of the website is to promote the “Millennium Development Goals.” In 2000, all nations of the United Nations agreed on eight specific goals to be reached by 2015 , which they named the “Millennium Development Goals.”
Becca Ricks, a senior from New York studying Arabic, talked about how the international development groups plan to implement these goals.
“I was volunteering at a global awareness event recently, and they were using one of the millennium goals as one of their big slogans,” she said. “The millennium goals are what the U.S. government has to look at every year to see whether or not we’ve fallen short at our efforts of international development.”
A local advocacy group dedicated to supporting soup kitchens and food banks, Operation Just One Can, will participate in the Peace Day broadcast.
“We answer the who, what, when, where, why and how people can join in and give support,” said Tony Marren, founder of Operation Just One Can.
Students interested in getting involved with the group can find it online at OperationJustOneCan.org.
Ricks said there have been many changes in international development in recent years.
“I think that a lot of individuals and a lot of governments are realizing that past efforts have failed because there weren’t enough good ideas,” she said. “The focus now is on individuals who have really great development projects getting funded rather than just handing money to tribal leaders.”
Fantl said he feels PeaceDay.tv will help the millennial ideals.
“We work to tie together the thousands of organizations working to create a sustainable and just world,” he said.
