Garden Grove : ‘Messages for Peace’ Campaign Expanding
A Garden Grove Unified School District teacher’s “messages for peace” campaign is expanding nationwide.
Alan Trudell, spokesman for the school district, said schools in 43 states besides California will be taking part in the balloon-lifted peace messages program started here four years ago by Paul Portner, a sixth-grade teacher at Riverdale Elementary.
Each year Portner has students write poems and other peace messages, Trudell said. These poems and messages are then attached to a giant weather balloon that is sent aloft on Sept. 16, which has been designated as “International Day of Peace” by the United Nations.
Interest in the program outside of Garden Grove prompted Portner to write instructions on how the peace-messages concept can be used in schools. Using these instructions, more than 400 schools in 44 states will launch peace messages Sept. 16, Trudell said.
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