Youth activism and Lou Jones' photography studio

 Ambureen:

My name is Ambureen and this is my first year doing Peace in Focus. Starting this program I was nervous. Nervous about not making friends, or not being able to meet a certain expectation. None of these things happened. Everyone was so friendly and we became friends so fast. In this blog I would like to talk a bit about what Peace in Focus was like.

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."

This is a quote, we encountered today. What does it mean to you? I interpreted it as, you can live life and take advantage of everything, appreciating what life gives you, and not taking it for granted, or you can treat nothing as a miracle. What we talked about today was leadership, leadership in our communities. We went over different ways of promoting change. Some things we talked about included starting clubs in our schools, and starting clean-ups in our community. One of our facilitators mentioned that there is more to do in our communities than just picking up the trash. She brought up a good point and mentioned all of the other things we could do to build our communities. I really enjoyed this program, and I really love making and spreading peace now. And photography has become a great passion of mine. Peace in Focus is a great program.

Dounia:

One day during the workshop we went to photographer Lou Jones' studio. He told us about his work and he took photos of some of us. We took our bio pictures there. We saw a lot of his pictures and he told us about how he likes taking pictures of pregnant women. He showed one of these pictures and said that the kid in the woman's belly then is now our age or older.. Amazing.