Youth Peace Ambassadors initiative showcased at Goi Peace Forum 2026!

Youth Peace Ambassadors Initiator, Miki Kawamura, Shares YPA Activities

Under November's quiet light, people of many generations and backgrounds gathered at the Goi Peace Foundation Forum. Lifelong activists and newcomers, elders and young people — each carried a vision of peace shaped by their own life. In the room, those visions gently crossed and connected.

A question that brought peace home

The moment that stayed with many of us came from Jeremy Gilley, this year's Goi Peace Award laureate and founder of Peace One Day.

"On September 21st, Peace Day — who do you want to make peace with?"

When we hear the word peace, we often picture something vast and distant — Israel and Palestine, China and Taiwan, Ukraine and Russia. The scale can be overwhelming, and easy to feel that this has nothing to do with me. That there is nothing I can do.

But Jeremy's question quietly turned the lens back toward what is near. The conversations we have avoided. The tensions we have chosen not to face. The relationships that feel too close — and therefore too difficult — to confront.

Peace may not begin where it feels biggest. It begins within, where it feels most familiar.

A future that begins with me

In the forum's second dialogue session, held under the theme "A hopeful future that begins with me," Miki Kawamura, Initiator of Youth Peace Ambassadors (YPA), shared what she has learned from her grandmother:

Peace is not something to think about. It is something to live and embody.

Many people can speak about peace — but far fewer actually embody its spirit in their daily lives. That, Miki shared, is precisely who she wants to become.

She also spoke about YPA's beginnings: a journey she started alone, which now reaches young peacemakers in more than 2000 youths in over 100 countries. Different backgrounds, different languages, different stories — yet united by the same desire: to make peace not a distant ideal, but a lived reality. The belief that once took root at a family table now pulses across continents, carried by a generation that refuses to wait.

Looking ahead

Peace is not a distant ideal. It lives in today's choices — in who we choose to stand beside, and how we choose to live. It is not built by running ahead alone, but created, side by side, with everyone here.

Youth Peace Ambassadors will continue to carry this question — who do you want to make peace with? — into every gathering, every conversation, every country we are part of.

May Peace Prevail on Earth.