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Dear Friends,
As I prepare to take another trip to Sierra Leone, Africa, this Saturday, I can only reflect on this journey since we launched TheWhole9.com in 2006 and The Peace Project in 2010. As some of you may know, we launched The Whole 9 shortly after MySpace had sold for a record $685 Million to News Corporation and we often joked that we would build The Whole 9 and sell off a piece and use the money to change the world. Instead, inspired by the work of Jeremy Gilley and the organization he founded, Peace One Day, and the photos that Pep Bonet took in Sierra Leone following the devastating Civil War there, we launched The Peace Project and in four years have created more change than I think we ever imagined.
It’s been an incredible collision of art, social media and social change with over 25,000 people worldwide (many of them visual artists) joining hands and giving art, money and time to changes tens of thousands of lives in Sierra Leone and in the Philippines where we recently finished our first community of houses for families that lost their homes in the typhoon and where we’re planning to build our first Peace Center next month. I’m also thrilled to share that we’ll soon be launching an initiative to take veterans off the streets of Los Angeles and put them in homes.
Our journey is filled with stories of people like you stepping up and also of stories of people whose lives we’ve changed together. I’ve had people who received crutches during The Peace Project’s Operation Rise tell me it was the happiest day of their life. I had one of the managers of Sierra Leone’s Amputee Soccer League tell me that, through our Peace Tips initiative, we gave crutch-users new feet. I know that many of the children whose education is being sponsored through The Peace Project would not have an opportunity to go to school otherwise. I’ve seen the transformation of an overgrown lot filled with broken dreams in the Philippines to a community filled with vibrant houses and families who are looking forward to a future filled with abundance.
This unique combination of art and change, of diverse groups of people worldwide taking personal responsibility for our world and coming together with the intention to make it a little kinder has created change that nearly all major non-profits that I’ve talked with are amazed at, and that I’m incredibly proud of -- hopefully you are as well.
People often ask me “what’s next”, to which I not-so-jokingly reply “more of the same.” Read below for updates that are shared with my heartfelt gratitude and my sincerest wishes that you’ll continue to join us on this journey.
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Transforming Tragedy into Opportunity!
The transformation of Tabunok continues as we head to the Philippines in April to build our first Peace Center. From this community center, we'll expand the co-operative we started, a weekly Farmer's market will take place selling organic fruits and vegetables from the gardens planted during the house-building, vocational training will be brought in, the center will host arts and cultural programs, and micro-lending will begin -- all designed to turn a terrible tragedy into an enormous opportunity.
Our work in Tabunok also serves a purpose that will touch lives far outside the Philippines. Our goal is to refine our community building model and then apply it here in the United States as part of The Peace Project's most ambitious program yet, the Veterans Independence Project, an initiative to put 1,000 homeless Los Angeles Veterans in houses by July 4, 2018.
We’re currently running an IndieGoGo campaign to provide funding to build the Peace Center and provide seed money for our Veteran’s Program. Click here to support this campaign and pick up one of the great perks shown below.
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Everything that is done in the world is done by hope. ~~ Martin Luther King Jr.
“Hope” featuring the work of artist Mark Acetelli opened on January 31 at The Whole 9 Gallery and continues through the end of March. Mark’s paintings are inspired by the intensely personal introspective journey of life, from the ever-changing complexities of love, loss, birth and death -- continuously building up and tearing down, layer upon layer, adding and subtracting.
Joining him in the gallery is sculptor Matt Gallant whose pieces that capture the elegance of the human form are cast in bronze and finished with hand-painted patinas.
Click here to view this show online or pay us a visit on Main Street in Culver City.
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Next up at The Whole 9 Gallery
Words are important – if you choose them wisely and paint them well, submit yourself for our next show “Words” opening in early April. Just upload a gallery of applicable work to your profile on TheWhole9.com and email a link with your contact information (including phone number) to submi...@thewhole9.com by this Friday, March 20th at noon PDT.
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Culver City's Affair of the Arts, May 30th & 31st
On May 30th & 31st, The Whole 9 will produce our 4th Affair of the Arts in downtown Culver City. The Affair will feature the work of 60 of Southern California's premiere painters, photographers, sculptors, ceramicists, wood workers, glass blowers and jewelry artists, plus there will be two days of live music, interactive activities for children, snacks and sweets. Proceeds also help fund The Peace Project’s work.
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