#HopeForPeace via #school | 05.06.2025

Yona Tukuser
Jun 5
3 min read

Updated: Jun 10

On June 5, just one day before the end of the school year, I had the honor of sharing my message “Hope For Peace” with two classes at the Istituto Comprensivo “Cristoforo Colombo” in Fiumicino, Rome.

The initiative was born from a chance encounter on Instagram —when English teacher Simona Perfetti came across a photo of me holding the sign “Hope For Peace” in St. Peter’s Square. She wrote to me with an invitation to speak to her students about peace. I accepted with inspiration and deep gratitude—because I believe peace is the foundation of development. And peace begins with each one of us.

I believe that Italy is one of the few nations that truly understands the profound value of peace. Here was born one of the greatest artistic heritages in human history—and to create art, peace is essential.

Peace is necessary to unlock the creative potential of humanity.

Peace is necessary for the progress of science.

Italy already holds within itself the founding values of peace—values that carry both memory and future.

And it is thanks to young people that these values will continue to grow and bear fruit.

I am thankful to Simona and to the whole school for this meeting.

Thank you to the students for our dialogue about peace and for this invaluable experience!

At the beginning of the lesson, I showed the children the air raid alert app on my phone. I told them that if the siren were to go off, it would mean that at that very moment, children their age in Ukraine would be running to bomb shelters and continuing their lessons underground.

And as I spoke—the alarm actually went off.

For over three years now, children in Ukraine have lived under constant stress and fear. They do not sleep peacefully at night because of ongoing air raids. And at 8:00 in the morning, they begin school—facing a new day that brings no guarantee of safety.

I also told the students in Rome about the hope found in the testimonies of peasants who died of hunger in Bessarabia during 1946–1947. Stories that intertwine with the experience of a 6-year-old boy from Mariupol who, after losing both parents in March 2022, was so hungry in a bomb shelter that he ate one of his toys.

I shared with them that even more terrifying than war is hunger.

And even more terrifying than hunger—is the absence of morality.

Those who need peace the most are the children living through war.

They are innocent hostages of adult aggression.

Voiceless and fragile, the children affected by conflicts and wars suffer the most—without the means to defend themselves, to flee, or even to be heard.

Their voices are drowned out by the noise of conflict and the silence of indifference.

My message “Hope For Peace” is their voice.

The voice of the voiceless, who still continue to hope for peace.

Let us listen to the voice of the children.

And then they began to speak—through drawings, through words, through colors. I asked the students to express their own message for peace on butcher paper, just as I did in St. Peter’s Square.