Approach and differentiation

In the face of violence, we propose ideas that awake peace reflexes. There are several complementary paths that can lead to relations of peace and we favour multi-path approaches, not a particular method.

Our field of action is upstream, centred on raising the awareness of human values amongst children, teens and adults. We center our efforts on helping parents, schools and society transmit these and how to apply these in everyday life.
By centering our approach on human values, i.e. on what is human, we aim to bring a positive and empowering approach, as opposed to a denunciating one.
Our aim is also to help very different persons discover that, usually, they  share very similar human values.

Some NGOs devote themselves to peace, others to non-violence, yet others to more security and so forth. For Grains of Peace, seeking peace at the global level and controlling violence in everyday life go very much together and shouldn't be dissociated.

We focus on the unacceptability of violence rather than on non-violence. This nuance is important for those who feel ill at ease with non-violence as an option and refute it.

Our approach is to federate. We hope to bring value and useful tools to those who specialise in dealing with violence. We aim at building partnerships with all those who wish to do so, in Switzerland and in several countries around the world. We are not interested in competing.

Our web site will be gradually become a veritable interactive tool, both educational and entertaining, with answering surveys and quizzes, inputting peace tales, quotations and personal stories online oneself, and expressing oneself on our forums. Few websites relative to "human values/peace/violence" are designed in this spirit or cater at the same time, yet differently, to children, teens and adults.

This website will be highly multilingual, soon including languages such as Serbian, Arabic, Turkish and Russian, in addition to the usual 4-5 main European ones, a big plus compared to existing websites on the subject.

Concerning our on-the-ground activities, we put all our efforts on creating encounters and situations that aim at sensitization, including for violent or violently assaulted individuals, usually through partnerships or by invitation. Our mission doesn't include however taking charge ourselves of such persons, nor does it include creating shelters or meeting homes for them, because others can do this better than we could.

Geographically, we function without borders: we don't limit ourselves to a city, a region or even a country. With Internet, we establish contacts and partnerships with associations andindividuals who are interestd in collaborating in a spirit of constructive exchange.