stadtaachen

The annual Aachen Peace Run (Aachener Friedenslauf) has been going since 2001, and the thousands of students and schoolchildren taking part each year prove time and again that peace and solidarity are issues at the very heart of what Aachen’s about. Before the run, David and his friends have attended classroom workshops to find out where wars are being fought and where – even here in Germany – there are signs of violence, discrimination and suppression. He knows he can do something about it. The money which is, literally, run into the coffers by the Aachen Peace Run, thanks to many sponsors, goes directly to support peace projects across the world – an idea so convincing that other cities are now holding similar events too.

Organisations are engaged in pro-equality and anti-war initiatives

In Aachen, the first German city to be liberated from Nazi tyranny, a large number of organisations are actively engaged in pro-equality and anti-war initiatives. Each year on Anti-War Day, 1st September, the Aachen Peace Prize (Aachener Friedenspreis), for example, honours people at “grass roots” level who have worked for, and brought about, peace. This high-profile media event is an impressive showcase calling for more humanity and encouraging ordinary people to take a stand for what’s right.

Missio, Misereor and the Pontifical Missionary Childhood (Kindermissionswerk) are three charities based in Aachen helping create basic living conditions on the ground in crisis-hit regions across the world. Aachen’s location in proximity to borders with two other countries, its peaceful population drawn from a wide variety of nations, its large number of town twinning arrangements, exchange programmes and international collaborations all go to create a natural atmosphere of multiculturalism – irrespective of skin colour, religion or ethnicity.

The inaugural statement for the Aachen Peace Prize contains the words, “For us, peace is the absence of war – but yet so much more than that. Peace is an attitude of mind”. Every pace David runs propels him further away from hatred and war, violence and oppression.

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