It’s wonderful to be back with Global Peace Heroes after a year-long sabbatical. I’m excited to share with you about my recent trip home to Israel and Palestine, where I had the opportunity to visit one of our partner schools, Jerusalem School Bethlehem (JSB).
My return home after several months away was deeply emotional—both comforting and challenging. While I was so happy to reconnect with familiar places and people, I couldn’t ignore the profound weariness that has settled over the place I call home.
The exhaustion is palpable. Across diverse communities, I encountered people who appear defeated. A certain sadness permeates everything. Many there feel helpless and hopeless. Yet beneath this heaviness runs a complex undercurrent of emotions—anger, grief, and, perhaps not surprisingly, a persistent desire for moments of normalcy and peace.
My visit to JSB offered a striking contrast to this prevailing atmosphere. Getting to Bethlehem wasn’t simple—navigating closed checkpoints and unexpected barriers has become a common challenge when visiting the West Bank. But after several attempts, my friend Liz and I found a back road into Bethlehem, arriving just in time for our visit.
At JSB we were warmly received by Miss Grace, the school director, who took us to meet Mr Jack, the high school principal. Over Arabic coffee and pastries, they shared how the school has been navigating these extraordinarily difficult times.
What struck me immediately was their unwavering commitment to their students. “It’s so important for us to show our kids that there is always light in the darkness and that they can also be that light,” they explained. The school has chosen “peace, love, and hope” as their themes for the year—not as empty platitudes, but as vital principles guiding their response to this tremendously hard moment in time.
For those living comfortable lives elsewhere, such themes might sound merely sentimental. But in the reality of ongoing war and violence, this commitment represents an extraordinary testament to resilience and deeply held values.
After our conversation, we toured the school, where they proudly showed us their Peace Heroes wall. Students had created visual presentations about Peace Heroes who modeled how to face challenging situations while making a positive difference.
We then had the privilege of observing two 9th-grade classes studying Peace Hero Wangari Maathai from Kenya. The students engaged deeply with her story—writing about their own dreams in light of Wangari’s example, drawing scenes from her life, and connecting with her journey in surprisingly personal ways.
“My dream is for my family to have good health and be safe,” one student shared. Another aspired to become a doctor “to help people in a very practical way.” Their reflections revealed how they saw themselves in Wangari’s story—finding hope and possibility in her resilience.
Miss Suha, their teacher, later shared with me how these Palestinian students immediately connected with elements of Wangari’s story that resonated with their own lives—her commitment to family, connection to the land, and determination to overcome the seemingly impossible. This mirrored what I had witnessed with the Yezidi girls in Northern Iraq whom Kirsten and I had taught Peace Heroes to–how these girls similarly found in Wangari not a distant historical figure from an unknown country and culture, but someone whose experiences spoke to their own and made her feel like a friend and mentor.
It’s the power of stories–where everyone can enter in at the place they feel most connected, where it’s most personal. It’s why we can share stories from cultures and contexts worlds apart from our students’ experiences, yet trust that they will discover bridges to their own lives—finding personal meaning even when the hero’s journey seems, at first glance, so unlike their own.
As we left, I told the students that big change happens when you start small, and that I believed each of them could become a world-changer. Both Liz and I were deeply moved by what we had witnessed—young people connecting with their identity, nurturing hope for a better future, and cultivating resilience in extraordinarily challenging circumstances.
Of all the interactions I had during my visit home, this was perhaps the most hopeful. These students weren’t just studying stories of courage and resilience—they were seeing themselves in these narratives and discovering that their voices matter. They were learning that even in the darkest times, there are people who choose to build rather than destroy, who find ways to heal, connect, and bring light into the world.
This is why Peace Heroes exists. This is why our work matters—perhaps now more than ever.
The pain and challenges in the region remain immense. But so does the possibility for transformation. And for this I am grateful.