Each year in September the Rotary Club of Wellington holds its annual Peace Ceremony aimed at promoting Multicultural Understanding and Conflict Resolution as a means to World Peace.
This year the ceremony will be held on Sunday, September 22nd at 3pm at the Rotary Peace Park on Royal Fern Drive next to the main Wellington public library.
The ceremony is the culmination of work that started in January with competitions within all the local schools. Elementary students were encouraged to submit posters that depict multi-cultural understanding and conflict resolution. This is not intended as an anti-war exercise.
Over 350 posters were submitted and judged. A winner from each school was chosen and will receive a check for $75 each and a certificate at the ceremony.
Middle school students enter poems on the same topics. Around 100 poems were received and a winner from each school will each receive a check for $100.
High school students submitted essays on a chosen theme. This year the words of Benjamin Franklin were used. “There is no such thing as a good war and no such thing as a bad peace”
A winner from each school will receive $125.
All the winner’s class room teachers will also receive a check for $75 for use in their class rooms.
A single student is also chosen as the person who is deemed to have contributed the most in achieving the goals of the Wellington Rotary Peace Initiative.
Each year a High School student is awarded the SMART award, Student Mediation Award for Resolutions Today. A student who helps with bring their classmates together receives the award.
The annual Wellington Rotary Peace Prize will go this year to Diana Stanley for her years of Service as CEO of The Lord’s Place and their work helping the homeless and less fortunate in Palm Beach County.
The Peace Ceremony commences with the PBSO Drill team providing an honor guard and playing “taps” as our flags are raised by The WHS Interact Members.
The words on our Peace Poles “May Peace Prevail on Earth” will be read in eight different languages by local residents.
After speeches by local dignitaries, including Mayor Michael Napoleone reading the Peace Declaration, and the presentation of prizes, the ceremony will end with Dr. Wes Boughner’s release of Peace Doves.
Dr. Wes Boughner, the Father of the Rotary Club of Wellington Peace Initiative, developed the annual World Peace Ceremony beginning in 2006. Most of the 60 Rotary Members of the Wellington Rotary Club have volunteered in some way to help put this program on for the Wellington Community. The Rotary Club feels “The Peace Initiative is aimed at reaching out to all within the Wellington community and to bringing awareness of the continuing need for multi-cultural understanding and conflict resolution as a way forward to achieving World Peace. It is especially important that we start this with our students and young people”
The whole community is welcome to attend the ceremony which lasts for around one hour.
Further information is available from Don Gross of the Rotary Club of Wellington, wellrotary1@gmail.com
“Service Above Self”