Celebrating from the heart

WANGANUI woman Gita Brooke says her mother influenced her life in the peace movement, as she speaks about the 2012 Mother's Day theme: "Peace wants a piece of the pie."

Mrs Brooke, co-founder of Operation Peace through Unity with her late husband, Anthony, said early advocates of celebrating Mother's Day in the US envisioned it as a day of peace.

In 1870, nearly 40 years before it became an official US holiday in 1914, Mother's Day was envisioned by social justice pioneer Julia Ward Howe to be a day of peace to honour and support mothers who had lost sons and husbands in the carnage of Civil War.

Mrs Brooke said this was a time to bring heart into muscle.

"The heart has four chambers and is symbolic of the home. If the chambers don't work together, we are in trouble - and so is the world."

This was also a time where women worked together, and without hierarchy, she said.

"This is a time to go to our governments and local leaders and really make a noise. Shame them into thinking about the money that goes into weaponry, (and) to feed the hungry and provide jobs that do not have anything to do with (manufacturing) weaponry."

Mrs Brooke issued the challenge for the women of the world to ask themselves: "What can I do?"

She added that the global military infrastructure was well-structured, well funded and well-prepared for action, but the international efforts for the prevention of conflict were generally under-funded.

Furthermore, Mrs Brooke said, Tobi Dress, an American attorney, specialist in peacebuilding processes says: "The international community will always be forced into crisis reaction rather than be engaged in preventive action if the international community does not collectively create an infrastructure for durable peace planning."