As part of a cooperation between the Department of TEFL of the University of Augsburg and the T.H. Shevchenko National University in Chernihiv, Ukraine, students from both universities as well as Ukrainian guest researchers and their family members got involved in promoting peace. After a video message from Oksana Matsnieva, Head of Department of Pedagogy and Foreign Language Teaching Methodology at the University of Chernihiv, a short talk by a student with Ukrainian roots from Augsburg and a report on her experiences by a Ukrainian guest researcher, the participants dealt with the question of what peace or its absence means in our society, with a special focus on the context of the war in Ukraine.

In collaboration with the Ukrainian workshop guests, who provided important impulses with their reports on the current situation, the participants created poems and short texts. These texts were then printed on postcards.  The postcards will be available in front of the cafeteria of the University of Augsburg from 21 June until 7 July 2022, where people are invited to pause for a moment, write down their own thoughts on the topic of peace and send the postcards to other people. We thus hope that the messages will find their way through Augsburg and possibly into the whole world.

The project is based on  Intercultural Service Learning, a pedagogy that combines formal learning and community service. It is further linked to the Global Peace Path, a Germany- and worldwide initiative that aims to promote peace through poetic statements and creative forms of expression.

More information on the Global Peace Path can be found here : www.weitblick-action.de, www.lmu.de/globalpeacepath, www.facebook.com/globalpeacepath

Responsible for the project Global Peace Postcards were:

Prof. Dr. Petra Rauschert und Julia Stöckner