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| Global Peace One Man, One Woman, One Child At A Time |
Kumu Gupta
04/04/2023
Global Peace One Man, One Woman, One Child at a time Having grown up in Kuwait all childhood, my parents still lived there when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. I still remember calling them after I heard Peter Jennings on ABC World News on TV giving breaking news of the invasion. And telling them to stay away from the windows, in case of explosions, as they lived right across from the Amir’s Palace in Kuwait City and could see helicopters over the Palace during early hours of the invasion. That was the last we, my siblings and I here in US heard from them. They were unreachable for a whole month due to phone lines being cut off. A very scary time for us children here in the US not knowing what happened to them. I finally got a call from my parents from Mumbai India after they were airlifted from Jordan by Air India planes sent by government of India. They had to take what they could and be driven to Jordan for that. And that’s when I heard how they had to hide in the basement of their building with others while Iraqi soldiers went door to door knocking with the but of their guns to find ' traitors'. Also at the time, my only brother and youngest sibling was visiting us in US from Kuwait , with just his suit case of clothes, on summer vacation from American School there and couldn’t go back since the airport was closed with no news of how long. My next experience of worldly unrest was when 9/11 happened. It hit home, my new home America, because one of the planes was from Boston where I had recently moved to from California. But this time I took courage from another MA resident, Susan Retik, who lost her husband in one of the World Trade Center Tower’s and despite her unimaginable loss decided to help other widows in Afghanistan, to stand on their feet, one hen at a time, by selling their eggs. I am honored to say President Obama awarded my nomination of Susan for President’s Citizens Medal, with the medal for her bravery and compassion, at the white house in 2010. And finally the unprovoked war in Ukraine, killing innocent civilians going about their daily lives, is the straw that ' broke the proverbial camel’s back’ and I decided to ' Be The Change, I Wish to See in the World' and launched my new initiative Global Peace Secretariat based on Mahatma Gandhi’s message of peace and non violence last October 2nd ‘The Mahatma’s’ birthday, which is celebrated by the U.N. as International Day of Non Violence and 2022 marked it’s 15th Anniversary. Global Peace Secretariat , an initiative not a non profit yet, seeks to bring global peace One Man, One Woman, One Child at a time by uniting non profits, students and communities globally by offering a free course as one of it’s way’s , on nonviolent communicating in our daily lives at work, home and play developed by and in partnership with Gandhi Smriti in Delhi India where Mahatma Gandhi spent his final 144 days. It’s a self taught downloadable course from https://www.globalpeacesecretariat.com which can be done in an hour or so over the weekend and at the end of which you get a certificate of completion from Gandhi Smriti emailed to you. There is also a 6 months free virtually taught version from the Smriti for groups of 15 -20 people. With these challenging times of global and domestic unrest, mass shootings and Black Lives Matter incidents, I want to do what I can to have a peaceful planet living in harmony, like Mahatma Gandhi’s grandchildren who I have been blessed and privileged to know and meet, who carry on his work into their late 80’s & 90’s golden age years because it's like the late Senator Ted Kennedy said ' the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.’ ----------------------------- *Miss Kumudini (Kumu) Gupta was nominated for 2023 Nobel Peace Prize for over 2 decades of volunteer social justice and human rights work including global peace. Some of Kumudini’s articles on social issues as Brand Ambassador for Times of India newspaper and Contributor to local, national media have been entry for Pulitzer Prize, National Press Club and South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA) Journalism Awards.
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