he year 2017 left us with a nice surprise. Going through our inbox, we found a message from Bahare Safavi, a young woman from Iran who collaborates with the Peace Sprit Foundation, based in Teheran, as a translator. She reached out to us, asking to collaborate with the United World Project editorial team. For her first article, we asked her to tell us something about the work carried out by the Foundation she is part of. This is her first piece, in which she offers us a most interesting fragment of fraternity – the first in a long series, at the very beginning of this 2018.

Peace Sprit Foundation is a civil society organisation which has been working for 13 years. Our dream is to enhance peace across the world. Peace Sprit Foundation started its work with the name of Bayan Iran Association (NGO) in 2005. At that time, the team focused on women and youth issues, lifestyle and social life in Iran.

Peace Sprit Foundation (PSF) is based in Tehran, Iran, and it is dedicated to promoting peace across the world. PSF was founded by Hamidreza Gholamzadeh together with a group of cooperative civil activists from Tehran. In 2009, The NGO won the WYSA prize for promoting UN SDGs on empowering women.

The main goals of what was then the Bayan Iran Association were promoting positive peace and seeking negative peace. Negative peace as a basis for true peace is the absence of tension, while positive peace is achieved by establishing justice and equality, and putting an end to oppression for everyone across the globe. In addition, our team has been trying to build a bridge between Iranian activists and civil society. After years of planning and contemplation, the founder and administrative team decided to expand their span of activities. Therefore the name of Bayan Association was replaced by Peace Sprit Foundation. We in Peace Sprit Foundation believe that negative peace should be integrated with positive peace.

PSF’ aim is to cooperate with CSOs, NGOs and IGOs at the local, regional and international levels, promoting peace and stability in conflict areas, empowering women, promoting human rights, helping refugees and displaced people. We work in cooperation with a group of activists, peace practitioners, journalists and related organizations and try to build a more peaceful and secure world. Our agenda consists of peace building, conflict resolution, mediation and other related activities. In order to achieve these goals, we try to develop mutual respect and understanding between nations.

Activities

PSF interventions are based on the principle of cultural exchanges, peaceful relationships, understanding different people from different countries and connection and cooperation with peace NGOs. Our activities include translating peace-related articles, ‘Knowing Nations’ sessions, hosting tourists, developing a database of international and local peace NGOs, and conducting tours.

Knowing Nations sessions

Up to now, Peace sprit Foundation has held many ‘Knowing Nations’ sessions. We invite locals of other countries to speak about their country. The purpose of these sessions is promoting cultural exchange and obtaining information about the lifestyle, peace NGOs, culture and politics of other countries. Up to now, we have held ‘knowing nation’ sessions about the Netherlands, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Sudan, England, Belgium, Germany, Malaysia and Egypt.

Hosting tourists

One of our missions is to show the good faces of Iran to the world, so we host tourists and tell them about Iran. We also use this opportunity to introduce PSF to global citizens. Unfortunately, worldwide media do not show real Iran. We in PSF seriously want to introduce Iran as one of the developed and modern countries.

Tours

We conduct two highlighted tour plans, the Iran political tour and Visit Iran and learn Farsi. In the first phase, these tours are held for Europeans:

• Iran political tour: The main purposes of the Iran political tour are introducing the political system of Iran as one of the most controversial ones in recent years and showing real Iran beyond what the media tells. Topics that are covered in this tour include the political system of Iran, the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the requirements and procedures for the selection of the leader, the three branches of power and their functions, political parties and their history, Iran’s political history and its foreign policy principles.
• Visit Iran and learn Farsi: We at the Peace Sprit Foundation believe that peace can be achieved through fostering understanding between different people and nations; and this cannot be achieved unless we promote more communication and exchanges between people, instead of waiting for governments to take action.

So, we hold series of short courses on the Farsi language to help university students studying it to visit Iran and engage in real life, participate in workshops and improve their command of Farsi through various programs.

Translating peace-related articles

The team of Peace Sprit foundation try to gather and obtain information about peace and justice. We try to promote peace in our community via peace education and translating peace articles.