Activities in Port

Exchange Programmes: building friendship at the grassroots  
 
Exchange programmes bring Peace Boat participants and local people together to share common activities and move beyond the barriers of language and cultural difference. By dancing together, playing sport or learning each other’s handicraft skills, we hope that participants can identify with each other on a human level, building the friendship links across nations and cultures that are a pre-condition for peace and sustainability.

Study Programmes: understanding local realities  
 In order to move towards peace and sustainability, we need to recognize the diversity, complexity and interconnectedness of our world. Local realities, at the grassroots level, are mostly unknown and thus ignored by the rest of the world. One powerful way to overcome this situation is by being directly exposed to those local realities, and by creating a common understanding of the problems and their possible solutions. Study programmes are organized so that they shed light on particular problems and share innovative local alternatives. This local level learning is then integrated into thinking on a global scale. We hope that, by raising such awareness, people participating in our activities can then better direct their actions towards positive change.
Supporting Each Other: goods for sustainability:

 One component of a Peace Boat visit to a port can include the delivery of support goods for sustainability. These goods, such as computers, school supplies and bikes are gathered by volunteers from across Japan and transported onboard the ship. Contributions reflect the actual needs of local communities, as determined through consultation with Peace Boat’s partner organizations. Peace Boat members personally deliver the goods to the community in question, with the objective of understanding the needs for, and use of, the goods and building friendship links. This work is coordinated by the Peace Boat project team United People’s Alliance (UPA). 
Joint Appeals: supporting local advocacy campaigns 
 
Peace Boat aims to contribute to the advocacy work of our local partners through the organisation of joint appeals in port aimed at raising local, national and international awareness. These can take the form of participating in public advocacy actions such as street demonstrations and delegations to embassies, or by highlighting a particular issue through a study programme or symposium. Media is key in this work, with the arrival of the ship itself often a newsworthy event that local partners can utilize to generate media coverage that includes their campaign issues. The ship is often used as a venue for press conferences.
Socially and Environmentally Responsible Tourism:  
Peace Boat strives to practice a progressive form of travel which aims to benefit people and communities at the local level as well as create a more meaningful and educational travel experience based on people-to-people exchange for participants. Our goal is to continuously identify and implement new practices that will help a better redistribution of the income generated through our travel/tourist activities towards our NGO or grassroots partners. We also hope to contribute to sustainable development projects and better understand and minimize our impact on the environment while linking local issues to the global context and learning first hand how we can positively impact these issues.
Calendar of Activities in Ports  
 Peace Boat and its local partners organize dozens of activities throughout the course of a global voyage. Here is a selection of recent and upcoming activities in ports of call around the world:
 58th Voyage – On the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki (August 9th), Peace Boat called on New York City and helped to organize a peace concert in front of the UN advocating for the abolition of nuclear arms and war.
 60th Voyage – Between March 6th and 12th, 2008, Peace Boat will pass through Antarctica for the first time on a mission to raise awareness about the dangers of global warming and advocate for more action to protect the environment.
 61st Voyage – Departing on July 15th, 2007 and returning on July 29th, 2007, the Peace and Green Boat make a successful voyage around Northeast Asia, focusing on environmental issues such as the Rokkasho Nuclear Reprocessing Plant and working towards greater regional cooperation towards a sustainable future.