A symposium entitled “Value Creation for Global Change: Building Resilient and Sustainable Societies” is being organized by the Bharat Soka Gakkai in Mumbai on November 14, 2014 from 7:00 pm to 8.30 pm. The symposium is based on Soka Gakkai International (SGI) President, Dr Daisaku Ikeda’s current peace proposal.
SGI is a UN recognised NGO that works for peace, culture and education based on Buddhist principles. The core activities aim to bring about an attitudinal change that values human life and dignity through initiatives in education, peace and culture.
Every year Dr. Ikeda has been submitting the Peace proposals to United Nations (UN) which explore the emerging areas of concern for the humanity and the interaction between core Buddhist concepts in an effort to realize peace and human security.
The 2014 Peace Proposal suggests three key areas critical to the effort to create a sustainable global society in which the dignity of each person shines. The inclusion of targets related to education while adoption of new set of global ‘sustainable development goals (SDGs) in 2015 is fundamental because education is the source of light that enables people’s dignity to shine. It focuses on how the humanity can respond to increasing incidences of disasters and extreme weather events which have shook us all in recent years. Dr. Ikeda proposes steps to strengthen resilience of human societies towards preparing for threats, managing crises and facilitating recovery.
In his proposal Dr. Ikeda emphasizes that the work of building a world without nuclear weapons signifies more than just the elimination of these horrific weapons. Rather, it is a process by which the people themselves, through their own efforts, take on the challenge of realizing a new era of peace and creative coexistence. This is the necessary precondition for a sustainable global society, a world in which all people—above all, the members of future generations–can live in the full enjoyment of their inherent dignity as human beings. “To me, this is the challenge of creating value–the process by which each of us, in our respective roles and capacities, strives to create that value which is ours alone to realize in order to benefit our fellow citizens, society as a whole and the future”.
He concludes that towards the work of value creation; the key role has to be played by the youth of today. “When the young people who will bear the hopes and burdens of the coming era unite in the determination that humanity and nuclear weapons cannot coexist, and that the horrors of nuclear weapons must never be visited upon anyone again, there is no obstacle that cannot be overcome.”