International Day of Peace 2026 – Investing in Peace, For Everyone, Everywhere, Every Day
SHC Article SHC Junior SHC StoryAt Shrewsbury International School Bangkok City Campus, the International Day of Peace is an opportunity for our community to pause, reflect and consider what peace means in our everyday lives.
Recognised each year on 21st September, Peace Day was marked across Shrewsbury International School Bangkok City Campus with students wearing white and blue, the colours associated with peace, and a special assembly led by our Year 6 students.
This year’s theme, “Invest in Peace: For Everyone, Everywhere, Every Day,” invited students to think beyond peace as simply the absence of conflict. Through music, drama, poetry, art and audience participation, the assembly explored how peace can be built through the choices we make every day.
Seeing Our World from a Different Perspective
The assembly began with a performance of Paul McCartney’s Pipes of Peace, setting the tone for a morning centred on connection, hope and our shared responsibility to one another.
Year 6 then took the audience on a journey far beyond Earth, introducing the story of NASA’s Voyager 1 and the famous “Pale Blue Dot” photograph.
In 1990, Voyager 1 was instructed to turn its camera back towards Earth from almost six billion kilometres away. From that extraordinary distance, our planet appeared as little more than a tiny speck of blue suspended in a beam of sunlight.
The students used this remarkable perspective to consider what it means to share one small planet. From space, borders and differences disappear from view. What remains is a single home shared by every person.
Their performance encouraged the audience to look at our world in a different way and to consider how our differences can seem smaller when we step back and see the bigger picture.
The Pale Blue Dot: One Home, Shared by All
Following the story of the Pale Blue Dot, students performed an original Year 6 poem inspired by Carl Sagan’s reflection on the photograph.
Through their words, they explored everything that exists on our tiny planet: families, friendships, dreams, memories and the everyday moments that make life meaningful. They also acknowledged the history of conflict and suffering that has taken place on the same small planet.
The poem brought the students to a simple message: We may speak different languages and come from different places. But beneath our differences, we all share the same Earth, the same home. Caring for our planet means caring for the people who live on it.
Peace, they reflected, can be found in kindness, understanding, respect and the willingness to listen to one another.
As the poem came to an end, the students formed a large circle and joined hands, moving together against a backdrop of Earth from space. The visual reminded us that although we may come from different places and speak different languages, we remain connected by the same planet.
What Does Peace Mean to You?
The focus then moved from the vastness of space back into the students’ own classrooms.
Year 6 students shared artwork exploring their personal understanding of peace. Their work featured familiar symbols including poppies, doves, olive branches, the peace symbol and paper cranes, alongside their own interpretations of collaboration, kindness and respect.
The students explored how these symbols have come to represent different aspects of peace and reflected on the idea that there is no single pathway to achieving it.
Their artwork demonstrated that peace can be understood on many different scales, from peace between nations to the moments of calm we create within ourselves and the ways we treat those around us.
Peace in Everyday School Life
The assembly then brought the conversation directly into school life.
Through a series of short, humorous sketches, students presented familiar conflicts that might happen in a playground or classroom, from disagreements during a football game to a dispute over shared colouring pencils.
The audience was invited to consider different ways each situation could be resolved and to vote on the response they felt would create a more peaceful outcome.
The activities highlighted an important message: peace is not about never disagreeing. It is about how we respond when disagreements happen.
Taking a breath, listening, sharing, compromising and finding a way forward together may seem like small actions, but these everyday choices help shape the culture of our school community.
Investing in Peace, Every Day
The assembly concluded by returning to the wider message of the International Day of Peace: that building a more peaceful world begins with the choices we make in our own communities.
For our students, investing in peace can mean listening to a friend, showing respect when we disagree, sharing with others, caring for our environment or choosing kindness in a difficult moment.
The Year 6 students brought these ideas together through their performances, reminding us that while peace may be a global aspiration, it is also something we can practise every day.
At Shrewsbury International School Bangkok City Campus, moments such as Peace Day give our students the opportunity to explore important global ideas while connecting them to their own lives and relationships.
For everyone, everywhere, every day: peace begins with each of us.
Shrewsbury International School Bangkok City Campus