Kenya Archives - Hyun Jin Preston Moon

Global Peace Foundation Kenya Fosters Environmental Stewardship

Editor — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 17:03:46 +0000

Just as we understand that living in harmony with the laws of nature is necessary for sustaining life on our planet, so too is aligning with the moral laws of the universe necessary for finding meaning and fulfillment in life that can be shared by all people.

Dr. Hyun Jin Preston Moon

Global Peace Convention 2021

Environmental stewardship underscores the responsibility we all share in caring for the natural world and ensuring its long-term health. At the heart of this celebration was the collective commitment to conservation, with a focus on practical actions that will make a real difference in Kenya’s fight against environmental degradation.

Global Peace Foundation Kenya, alongside key partners, recently celebrated the 2nd Mazingira Day, a day dedicated to environmental awareness and action, at Starehe Girls Centre. This event was a powerful demonstration of environmental stewardship, as it aimed to address the critical challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution while promoting sustainable practices that can safeguard our planet’s future.

A Collaborative Commitment to Sustainability

Speakers highlighted the community’s commitment to supporting the national tree-growing strategy. By actively participating in efforts to plant trees and promote sustainability, the Starehe Girls Centre is instilling the values of environmental responsibility in its students, encouraging them to become future stewards of the environment.

A representative from KCB Bank also demonstrated a strong commitment to environmental stewardship, announcing its goal of planting 1,500 trees at its branches by 2027, with a broader vision to plant 1 million trees annually. This initiative not only contributes to the ongoing national tree-growing campaign but also sets a model for other corporations to integrate environmental stewardship into their business practices.

Empowering Communities to Protect the Environment

Representatives from Global Peace Foundation Kenya highlighted the collaborative efforts that have allowed them to establish over 15 tree nurseries across 11 counties, which have produced over 2 million trees to date. These nurseries, with the capacity to grow 100,000 trees each, are a testament to the power of grassroots efforts in achieving large-scale environmental goals. Through such initiatives, communities are not only being empowered to take ownership of their environment but are also contributing directly to Kenya’s ambitious goal of planting 15 billion trees by 2032.

Taking Action: Planting 150 Trees

The event concluded with a hands-on demonstration of environmental stewardship—planting 150 trees at Starehe Girls Centre. This symbolic act was a reminder that environmental conservation requires both advocacy and action. Each tree planted represents a commitment to the future, helping to restore ecosystems, reduce carbon emissions, and promote biodiversity.

Moving Forward: Fostering a Culture of Environmental Stewardship

As Kenya continues to face environmental challenges, collective action is essential. The 2nd Mazingira Day was a powerful reminder that environmental stewardship is not just the responsibility of one organization or sector—it requires a broad and inclusive approach. By working together—across communities, businesses, schools, and government—we can protect and restore our environment for future generations.

The efforts seen at Mazingira Day serve as an example of how environmental stewardship can be woven into the fabric of everyday life. From the leadership of organizations like KCB Bank and Starehe Girls Centre to the grassroots efforts of local communities, every action counts. With sustained commitment and collaboration, Kenya can meet its ambitious environmental goals, ensuring a greener, more sustainable future for all.

The original post appears on Global Peace Foundation. Global Peace Foundation is an international non-sectarian, non-partisan, nonprofit organization, which promotes an innovative, values-based approach to peacebuilding, guided by the vision of One Family under God. GPF engages and organizes a global network of public and private-sector partners who develop community, national, and regional peacebuilding models as the foundation for ethical and cohesive societies. Dr. Hyun Jin Preston Moon is the founder and chairman of the Global Peace Foundation.

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Kenya Leaders for One Nation under God

Editor — Thu, 15 Dec 2016 20:09:51 +0000

As with many countries around the globe, Kenya has struggled to stem and address youth radicalization and violence in its many forms. In a recent interview with a leading 24-hour TV channel for Eastern Africa, KTN News, Global Peace Foundation Kenya Director Daniel Juma spoke on the importance of involving the youth in the National Peace Initiative to secure peaceful balloting in the upcoming 2017 presidential election.

The One Nation under God campaign is a nationwide peace initiative encouraging youth to be agents of peace who promote social cohesion and counter political incitement and violence. In the interview, Director Daniel Juma emphasizes the importance of involving youth in building solutions: “It must be about the people, not just the politics. We must give hope to the youth.”

The Global Peace Foundation works with its partners around the world to build lasting, inclusive solutions based on universal principles and shared values. A key focus in East and West Africa is youth radicalization. Click here to read more on GPF’s approach to countering and preventing youth radicalization.

The original post appears on Global Peace Foundation. Global Peace Foundation is an international non-sectarian, non-partisan, nonprofit organization, which promotes an innovative, values-based approach to peacebuilding, guided by the vision of One Family under God. GPF engages and organizes a global network of public and private-sector partners who develop community, national, and regional peace building models as the foundation for ethical and cohesive societies. Dr. Hyun Jin Preston Moon is founder and chairman of the Global Peace Foundation.

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Countering Radicalization of Youth through One Family Under God

Main — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 18:53:19 +0000

The rational-choice theory that has been so popular up until now suggests that, given the right incentives and punishments, human beings and thus human societies will make rational choices. And yet, clearly, that has not been the case. War is not rational; violence is not rational; exploitative business practices are not rational; corruption is not rational.

Programs like Global Peace Volunteers, run by the Global Peace Foundation, engage youth in discovering shared values that span cultural and religious differences through workshops and volunteer work.

These are all limited, short-sided practices that result from a fundamental misperception of who we are and the ways of the universe. With this understanding, we seek a more holistic way of addressing the problems of human society through first establishing the common aspiration by which we can live, work, and organize society and its multiple sectors as One Family Under God.

The shootings at Garissa University in Kenya by a highly educated, privileged person suggest that it is not access to power, jobs or poverty that drive some to act in largely incomprehensible ways. Many – if not most – leaders of radical groups come from educated, privileged backgrounds. The many volunteers who travel at great risk to join the Islamic State from the developed nations are not simply underprivileged youth looking for jobs.

Certainly, poverty-stricken populations are very vulnerable to radicalization but perhaps it has more to do with its appeal as a way to achieve meaning and purpose in life, an inflated sense of power and a way to express one’s rage and frustration; humiliation of the human spirit. The proper response to this sort of spiritual violence is not found in political or economic solutions but spiritual ones. Perhaps understanding the spiritual principles involved allows us to create better political and economic policies and practices, but it does not work the other way around.

In short, political and economic incentives may affect human behavior on one level, but at the deepest level, we are driven by our most deeply held values. Values that are rooted in our spiritual faith, values that are rooted in the family, drive us in our choices, attitudes and behaviors at a level that goes much deeper than rational thought. It is the core of who we are; knowing this, the vision of One Family Under God “cuts to the core” by asserting our immutable, spiritual identity as the framework from which we can reform our social, political, economic cultures.

This approach seeks to change our perception of each other and ourselves as the first and most fundamental basis for change. It becomes the touchstone for all our other endeavors. It creates the basis for changing the way we do business, how political parties function, the way we educate our children, engage in service; the way we live our lives. This vision and approach are at the core of the vision of One Family Under God, and therefore is the basis for engaging multisectoral partners.

The vision, principles and values put forth in One Family Under God have been preserved and passed down through the ages of human history. People of faith resonate with the vision because it’s already familiar to them; its part of what they study and teach and communicate to their communities. The unique value-add of we must take in an interfaith approach is to bring focus to the universal principles espoused by faith traditions and implicit in the vision, and stressing the vital common mission of faith leaders to promote the greater good in civil society.

Dr. Hyun Jin Moon at the Global Peace Festival Kenya in 2010 addressing members of 1% for Change, a student leadership organization that encourages students to contribute their time, skills and resources to address community issues.

As a central aspect of our initiatives in East Africa, we are proposing a focused engagement between spiritual leaders and the youth organizations, because youth are looking for “meaning and motivation” and grappling with fundamental questions about life and reality. We need to provide opportunities to learn from, question and connect with those whose life work is rooted in these issues. Ultimately our approach maintains that identity based conflict must be addressed at its roots, through recognition of our shared identity as part of the human family under God.

In shaping a new future in the era of globalization, youth of today can embrace our common human heritage, and can build cohesion in our diverse and pluralistic world through shared values as one family under God. But they also need to connect with the wisdom of the past to make good choices for the future; the current trend of encouraging youth to “be who they want to be” or “take the lead” may lead to very dangerous consequences if they are not rooted in principles and values or the sense of a greater good!

Fundamentally, spiritual leaders have moral authority, distinct from power in that it is recognized from without rather than imposed by the person himself/herself. And rather than imposing desired behaviors through force or incentives, sparking the truth in others and helping them see a bigger picture and a greater dream of the future creates owners who will develop that vision in ways we could never imagine.

The world is now coming to recognize the problems caused by the poverty of the human spirit in the wake of secularization and globalization, but still struggles to reconcile the competing truth claims by the world’s religions. The One Family Under God vision and approach to interfaith balances these by working to articulate universal principles to create an ethical framework and create a consensus on shared values from which we can live and work together beyond perceived identities.

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