29/11/2003

Group V111 Old myths new tales A never ending story? Or toward a human narrative?

This is the panel I am on at the launch of the Alliance for the New Humanity in Puerto Rico in December. While thinking about this yesterday. I decided it was time to write a new tale.

If you read this last part of the tale, you will see there is an important event planned for today in Pomona Queensland Australia.

So they did! On Saturday the 29th November 2003 at 2pm Granma Kerry on behalf of the children of the world - took over into the Old Scout’s Hall at Pomona and the Peace Embassy was started." Tomorrow will to be Caitlin’s third birthday – what a nice gift this will be for her and all children-their own Peace Embassy!!" Gramna Kerry thought."Now I have something for show and tell in Puerto Rico!"

< Below is my new tale, one I hope you will print out and read to children. Let them know they are welcome to come to visit Granma Kerry at the Peace Embassy and leave their handprints to show the world they just want PEACE. Let them know there is HOPE for a better world for all children - if we all just get off our butts and do something!....... Kerry Bowden
Ambassador of Peace
Peace Embassy Pomona

With all the bad things happening in the world and many of leaders doing really stupid things, Granma Kerry became very worried. So she made a promise that day to Caitlin Jean - that she would work the rest of her life to make it a better world for Caitlin before she turns 15 in the year 2015.

Granma Kerry knew that to make it a better world for Caitlin Jean she would have to make it abetter world for all children.

While she hadn’t given much thought to how she was going to do this, she knew it was urgent and must be done.

Lucky for Granma Kerry she had lots of friends who she had met on the Internet, when she was learning to be a webmasters. Yes even Granma’s can be webmasters if you have someone nice like Christopher in England teaching you.

Granma Kerry thought and thought about how to make the world a better world and as it was the adults not the children who had made the big mess of the world and knew that children all want peace. Granma Kerry decided the best idea was to ask the children to help her fix the world.

One day in July 2002 when Caitlin was just one year old. Granma Kerry was having her morning cup of tea, outside her little white house in Cairns. A poem kept coming into her head as she listened to more war talk on the radio, so she got up and went inside to find a pen and paper to write it down. Granma Kerry was a poet and artist you know.

One Mind One Voice Across the world, across the net, our hearts reach out and touch. This would be the message she was sure children would want to tell all the adults of the world. So she wrote what was in her heart and this became her message to the world. Our Message, Caitlin and Granma and all children’s message.

While Ofir’s family now lived in Israel, his father had come from Bagdad in Iraq.

Ofir was busy making his next CD in Hebrew, when the email from Granma Kerry arrived. He sent an email back to Granma Kerry and said "You poem landed in my imagination and I just had to stop and compose the music for it"

Next Ofir sent the poem to Pakistan were Yahya was waiting for it. Granma Kerry and Yahya had been friends since the Bombing of Afghanistan in 2001. They like Ofir and Granma Kerry had meet over the Internet. Yahya a young graphic artist from Kabul in Afghanistan who had to leave his family and move to Pakistan because of all the wars when he was growing up, his mother now lives in a different country to Yahya and this makes him very sad.

Yahya made a movie around his feeling about the war and that is how Granma Kerry and Yahya meet. Kerry thought Yahya’s movie was better then lots of things she was seeing on TV, so when Yahya told Granma Kerry he would like to make a little movie

about one of her poem’s. Kerry said " when I write the right poem I will send it to you"

One Mind One Voice poem was perfect for Yahya to make into a six-minute movie, which Granma put up on a website, called www.onemindonevoice.org and then sent an email out to lots of friends and they sent it on to lots of their friends.

Do you know that these emails went all around the world and within three weeks the President of France, Jacques Chirac sent an email to Granma Kerry, and in it he said he agreed with all the things she has written in the poem.

Next day Arsenio from Puerto Rico contacted Granma Kerry, to tell her that a group of people he was working for, including two Nobel Peace Prize winners Dr Oscar Arias Sanchez who used to be the President of Costa Rica and Betty Williams from Ireland

As well as Ricky Martin the singer and Deepak Chopra and many many more important people including even an astronaut Frankie Chang.

Arsenic told Granma Kerry that all these people had a meeting in Puerto Rico and they were trying to make it a better world for all children and they asked Granma Kerry if she would like to help advise them on how to go about this. They even included Granma Kerry and Caitlin Jean Futurist Australia on a Peace Declaration they had done.

Granma Kerry was very proud and very honoured to be asked to join this wonderful group of people. Granma Kerry told them straight away that she was very poor, as she thought they might think she had money to do lots of things, when she didn’t.

The Alliance for the New Humanity group said they didn’t care if she was poor, as it doesn’t take money to fix the world – it takes people who care about humanity to do that. We all need to think differently not the same old way. They liked Granma Kerry’s clock she has on the website which counts down the time till 2015, this is to remind everyone how long we all have to fix the world and keep the promise to Caitlin and all children. You can have a look at the clock and see how long we have now?

Next Granma Kerry thought she should go and start getting lots of children around the world to start talking to each other so they can all together figure out what the adults need to do to make it a better world for them. First Granma Kerry went to Djarragun School in far north Queensland close to where she was living in Cairns. This school is an indigenous school; Granma Kerry decided to go there because indigenous people of Australia have one of the longest song lines in the world. (Living Cultures) This makes them very wise and they know how to look after Mother Earth.

Down at the school, all 250 students covered their hands with paint in their favourite colours, and then Granma Kerry showed them where to put their handprints on the rolls of paper she had taken to the school. One Handprint went on the roll of paper, the other on a separate sheet of paper.

The rolls of paper Granma Kerry is taking around the world and asking other children to put they handprints, sometime next to these prints, sometimes on top of these handprints soon the roll of paper will be covered with prints of children from all parts of the word. The separate piece of paper Granma Kerry will send to other children around the world and then other children can send their handprints back to exchange with someone else.

Even the Australian Senate gave approval to the HOPE project just two weeks after Granma Kerry first thought of the idea. Now she knew that lots of people wanted to help her. Most people do want a better world for children and themselves, just lots don’t know how to go about it. So Granma Kerry decided to pack up her little old red car, taking her computer and some clothes and drove right down the coast of Queensland, back to the Sunshine Coast where she used to live a long time ago. She was worried that her car might not make it – but it did.

After spending some time with Caitlin Jean and her mummy and daddy. Granma Kerry found a little school at North Arm so she asked them if they would like to be part of the HOPE project. They said yes as their little rural school does lots of things to help fix the world. Their motto Granma Kerry liked very much.

People all over the world now wanted to do things to help and Granma Kerry was very happy. As she really did know lots of adults want a better world for children, they just didn’t know what to do, as the problem seemed so big. But it is never big if you all do it together.

With no money left, Granma Kerry knew if she was to keep this promise she must have a whole community of people to help her. As there were more and more people wanting to give Granma Kerry their handprints, even the adults.

Noose Shire was a place Granma Kerry remembered, where there were lots of good caring people. Long before Kerry was even a Granma, she needed lots of people to help her and her friends set up a gallery. People in Noosa Shire all worked very had and now have a Regional Gallery.

While it had been a long time since Granma Kerry had been in Noose it didn’t take long before she found lots of the people who remembered her, Granma Kerry asked them if they would again help her and they all said yes.

Driving around to find a place to live, Granma Kerry went to Pomona and as soon as she drove into the street leading into town, she looked up ahead and saw the huge Cooroora Mountain that once a year they have the King of the Mountain race.

It reminded Granma Kerry that what she was trying to do was a bit like an up hill race, very very hard, but when you succeed and get to the top, the view is worth the effort.

Granma Kerry knew that day; Pomona was where she wanted to stay and work to make it a better world for all of us.

Soon there were lots of people all helping Granma Kerry.

Granma Kerry by now was getting so many handprints from all the children around the world that she was running out of room in her bedroom at the house where she was staying. Also Granma Kerry was about to go to Puerto Rico on the 8th of December for the launch of the Alliance for the New Humanity where she would be meeting up with her many new friends, including Roberto Silvo, who had taken her under his wing, but she worried that she didn’t have anything for show and tell!

So she started to look around Pomona for a place where she could keep all the handprints and somewhere that children could come to leave their handprints. A nice lady called Janice told her that the old Scout’s Hall was not being used.

Right in the middle of town. Next to the forest was an old abandon Scout’s Hall, just under the huge mountain.

With her friend David they went to have a look, bending to duck under the branches hanging over at the gate and walked up to the building through the long grass. They both felt this place was very special as it gave you a sense of Peace, something they both knew we all want and need.

The local Noosa Council had given Granma Kerry the key so she could have a look at the building, but they didn’t really need them as the building had a door right through the wall – made by the white ants that had taken over once the scouts where not there.

"What a lovely place to set up a Peace Embassy" Kerry thought, as her and David looked in each room.

"Lots need to be done to fix it" David said, "yes I know and I don’t have any money at all," said Granma Kerry.

"I know," said Granma Kerry "We will move in and ask all the people to help us"

So they did! On Saturday the 29th November 2003 at 2pm Granma Kerry on behalf of the children of the world - took over into the Old Scout’s Hall at Pomona and the Peace Embassy was started.

Kerry Bowden
Global Children's Alliance
One Mind One Voice.
A Famility of Humanity
PS: Caitlin say