I'm writing to provide an update on the positive impact created by our past film World Peace and other 4th-Grade Achievements. This premiered in 2010, after four years of work to film, edit and fund-raise to enable its completion. This was the portrait of the World Peace Game, the wonderful creation of teacher John Hunter, who taught this in his classroom for roughly 30 years, teaching children the "work of peace."

To date since the film came out, John's World Peace Game Foundation has trained well over 1000 K-16 educators from over 38 countries, allowing thousands of children to develop the tools of peace building and compassion, and this work continues to expand. While the pandemic has certainly placed a pause on this work, many Games are scheduled for the near future. One of the wonderful developments in the last five years was the U.S. State Department's strong support of the sharing of John's work. Their partnership initially produced a Masterclass and Game in Copenhagen, and then a month-long series of events in Australia, and has now expanded to the Indo-Pacific region.

Thanks to a 2020 gift of the US State Department, The World Peace Game Foundation developed a virtual Train-the-Trainers program, certifying a small international group of top-level, experienced World Peace Game Facilitators who will resume the work that John started, once the pandemic is over. In addition, master classes for educators continue in a virtual format, without the game, for educators in Australia and the Indo-Pacific. The Department approached John in 2015 and offered to work together funding teacher and student fees internationally, and expresses interest in repeating this type of grant support to the Foundation.

In the near future, 16 educators across the US as well as in several other countries will be taking on the role of conducting Masterclasses for teachers (which also includes children playing the Game) which will lead to a much wider expansion of the World Peace Game. Before the film was shown, this was only taking place in John's public school classroom in Charlottesville, Virginia.

For more information and support for teaching children the work of peace, please visit this website: www.worldpeacegame.org

For all of you who supported this work, I want to express my gratitude. It is so rewarding as an independent filmmaker to see such a positive social impact created by a passion-driven film and its mission. Please note that a follow-up newsletter in a few weeks will be introducing a new project that has the same drive to positively change the lives for the betterment of our world.

Sincerely,

Chris Farina