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We are an interactive group that share the passion of our guest speakers through discussion.
The philosophy behind PAVE is that External Peace can only be created when each individual functions from a place of inner peace in their soul/heart. It is hoped by sharing our passions we can clear the path for a better understanding of our different truths.
We explore our differences of opinion in order to unite our common humanity.
New ways in accepting differences in world views are formed without resorting to aggression.
As for the history of how PAVE came about, the idea for PAVE originated from a meeting in about April 1996 between myself, and Ada Aharoni who had arrived in Sydney from Israel as a guest lecturer at a Sydney University conference on Global perspectives about Peace. Ada had recently been holding poetry and prose meetings in Israel between Jewish and Palestinian women with the intention of proving that a world beyond war could be a reality in Israel by promoting the commonalities between people through literature and through culture instead of focusing on the differences between them.
Ada called her literature meetings, Peace through Literature and Culture Paving the Way to a World Beyond War. The meetings were sufficiently fruitful for her to advertise their success in Israel; but such advertising resulted in very little media coverage or interest for her work. So Ada decided to go international and renamed her group, International Friends of Literature and Culture Paving the Way to a World Beyond War. Ada invited me to be her Australian representative; but not being sufficiently conversant with the common themes of humanity in prose and poetry, I declined to become a convener for such a group.
Nonetheless, Ada’s work reminded me of Buddhist teachings that when you have peace in your heart you can create peace in the world. Being inspired by the possibility that sharing the little things we love can actually enhance world peace, I agreed to form an interest group that would promote the concept of world Peace through inner harmony. I therefore credit Ada for inspiring the independent formation of PAVE the Way to PEACE.
PAVE began its first meeting in the Mitchell Library in June 1996 with me as its Coordinator and a group of 6 supporters. From the onset, the purpose of PAVE as stated above was to promote world peace by individually experiencing how differences in world views can be tolerated and accepted sufficiently without aggression to pave the way for a better understanding of our different truths.
After the very first meeting, every other meeting of PAVE has been held monthly for the next 20 years in NSW Parliament House either in the Waratah Room or in the Parkes Room. A range of Members of Parliament have hosted our very fruitful activities in that time –activities that are far too numerous to list here but which are briefly recorded on the PAVE Peace Pole which lives in the gardens on Level 9 of NSW Parliament House. In November 1998, PAVE was awarded the Peace Pole by the World Peace Prayer Society founded in Japan by Henry Kawada (President), with Kerry McCarthy as Secretary.
[ Pave the way to peace ]
Meetings at NSW Parliament House
6 Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000
Contact us for more information.