“Our prime purpose in this life is to help others” - Dalai Lama.

There is a unique aspect to PeaceJam. We do not merely learn about the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates; we learn from them. There are fourteen laureates on the PeaceJam board who fly across the world to personally mentor youth, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Betty Williams, Rigoberta Menchú-Tum, Leymah Gbowee, and Kailash Satyarthi. 

Through my Wolf Scholarship, I initiated a PeaceJam chapter at Dawson. Our primary focus is to implement service-learning projects at Dawson and in the greater community of Boulder County. PeaceJam has ten main focus areas, including alleviating extreme poverty, protecting the environment, and procuring human rights for all. As we discuss potential projects for each focus area, we study the laureates tied to each topic to understand how to make a difference. For example, The Dalai Lama primarily works with conflict resolution, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu works with non-proliferation and disarmament.

By studying Nobel Peace Prize Laureates’ strategies for making change, we have been able to execute projects like a drive that collected hundreds of books for the organization Books for Africa, a school-wide No Waste Challenge that brought awareness to the vast quantity of food we waste every day, and supply drives to create “Life Bags” filled with food and essential supplies for the local homeless population. Soon, we hope to get the Dawson Upper School advisories involved in a trivia competition to spread knowledge about the laureates.