No matter where I turn, someone is doing a year end review. My favorite Saturday radio music programs were full of broadcasting the 2024’s best or worst or long lists of those who are dead this past year or dead long ago. Nightly news is full of the same as are a whole consortium of December magazines. Reruns of every disaster show up on the screen or are part of every article. Email is full of organizations touting all the wonderful things they accomplished this year and at the bottom begging for dollars. Everyone is looking backwards.

 

Now, I’m not saying this is bad, but as for me, what’s gone before is gone. Since I can’t change a single thing that I did (or didn’t do) in 2024, why should I spend my valuable time reviewing it? And as for resolutions, well, you know things wished for or promised are only as good as one’s intentions at the time. Then they are mostly forgotten. No sense beating myself up for resolutions I did not accomplish.

 

However, some accomplishments deserve us looking at them as they can give us suggestions for projects we can do as we go forward in 2025.

 

A report from the Institute for Economics and Peace in Australia reports that right now in the world the highest number of active conflicts since World War II are taking place. This should give us pause for reflection about where we are going in our search for peace. The good news is that this group, which now has offices in seven countries and believes and stands for peace as the foundation for human flourishing, has through their Ambassador Program trained thousands for doing positive peace work in their communities. Trainings have taken place from Mexico to Indonesia and in over 150 countries. Looking forward for them will be a concentration on trainings for climate advocacy and community resilience.

 

The Estero Bay Nonviolent Cities Project on the Central Cost of California carries on concentrating on mutual aid that offers resources for anyone suffering from a loss of abundance. This includes many seniors and families that rely on food distribution outlets and organizations. The twice weekly free hot meals fed over 100 people each in two locations throughout the year, one offered through the Food Bank and the other from Los Osos Cares.

 

The Los Osos Resource Center offers aid and a list of agencies and organizations to assist people in need. Youth and families find assistance throughout the school system in San Luis Obispo County from The Link Family Resource Center. The SLO Food Bank has distribution sites throughout the county for pick-up of nutritious food every week. Over 36,500 residents were helped in 2024.

 

Food Bank runs a Children’s Farmers Market at the Food Bank warehouse. Children are given Food Bank Bucks and allowed to “shop” the warehouse. They choose and take home 10 to 15 pounds of fresh seasonal produce such as potatoes, carrots, oranges, pears, cabbage, squash, and lettuce. They are also given recipe cards to use to prepare the food. With each they learn the value of nutritious food, how to shop for it and pay, and how to prepare it.

 

The Estero Bay Kindness Coalition was busy throughout the year bringing together three bags of groceries weekly to 231 families. They gave away backpacks to school kids stuffed with two breakfasts, two lunches, and two dinners for weekend meals.

 

Peace education work continued through Yes We Can Peacebuilders and the Morro Bay Rotary Club at the local elementary school with the kids in the Sunshine Spreaders Club. Projects included the constructions of over 300 Garden Peace Pickets that the kids sold to raise money for special artist decorated peace poles to be placed throughout the community. Part of that project helped create the new Morro Bay Peace Garden in a prominent location. This garden is a place for quiet reflections and meditations and contains an artist decorated peace pole, beautifully hand painted buckets planted with a variety of succulents, and an ADA concrete pad and bench, as well as a variety of drought resistant plants put in by Morro Bay in Bloom.

 

Morro Bay in Bloom continues to beautify the town of Morro Bay, California with over 4200 volunteer hours completed in 2024. Throughout the town this organization put in planter boxes and created garden sites that don’t just help make Morro Bay beautiful but contribute to fighting climate change and offers the opportunity to volunteers who like to garden but have no other way to do so, an ongoing gardening experience.

 

Pace e Bene and Campaign Nonviolence continue to offer nonviolence trainings, speeches, videos, articles, books, youth grants, and other resources for individuals and organizations interested in furthering peace and nonviolence in their communities. Their special action days draw collaboration with thousands of events in association with International Peace Day. Peace Action Week from September 21 through October 2, 2024, had over 5,000 actions, events, and marches taking place in the USA and in 20 countries. Over 60,000 people took part in these events. Twenty-seven cities across the nation take part in the Nonviolent Cities Project with more signing up all the time. Pace e Bene works with these organizers on projects that foster nonviolence education and actions with local governments, school systems, religious communities, and nonprofit organizations.

 

We will keep looking forward and moving forward to advance peace in our communities, states, and our country and the world. Much has been accomplished and there is much more to do. We hope you will join us. Happy New Year!

By Ruth Ann Angus - Published on Substack December 21, 2024