Students as peace makers inspire, and their dedication to service is commendable. Each year, Herndon Friends, a Quaker society in Herndon, Virginia, invites every high school in Fairfax County to select one junior or senior or a group of students whose efforts promote peace. On Sunday, March 10, Herndon Friends honored the recipients of its 2024 Student Peace Awards of Fairfax County during a reception at the Sherwood C. Community Center in the City of Fairfax.

Margaret Fisher, program co-founder (2006), acknowledged and congratulated the awardees from public high schools, secondary schools, and two private schools for their efforts to think about peace as a means and an objective and for their work as peacemakers. “We have a book for each of you called “Sweet Fruit from the Bitter Tree,” Fisher said. The book, donated by author Mark Andreas and the publisher, is a compilation of 61 stories telling creative and compassionate ways out of conflict. 

Frisch said the Friends’ awards began nearly 20 years ago with “one school, one idea, and now look at how far it has spread. … If you ever wonder if your work is having an effect, think of that.”

Several awardees shared their comments during the gathering before the reception. Sofia Canizalez, spokesperson for awardee school organization Mountain View Mirror, an online newspaper covering diverse topics, including immigration, teen parenting, and mental health, at Mountain View High School, thanked her teacher, Michael Hardy, for helping change her life. The newspaper reports on social justice and helps build confidence among its writers, like Canizalez, who has written about motherhood.

Sean Lacalle, 18, of Herndon and a student at Westfield High School, candidly told how fate and timing led him to join the Westfield Student Ambassadors. Lacalle said he was sitting in his counselor’s office for another matter and “was dragged into it because my counselor needed a Spanish speaker to guide a new student who only spoke Spanish.” After touring with the student and seeing how it eased his transition to a new school, Lacalle was “hooked.”

Lina Liakakos of Great Falls, a junior at Langley High School, is founder/president of the Delivering Hope service club, facilitating monthly donations and events to support homeless shelters and community closets.

Special guests included U.S. Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-VA), Fairfax County School Board representatives Ryan McElveen, At-large; Robyn Lady, Dranesville District; Sandra Buck Anderson, Springfield District; and School Board Chair Karl Frisch, Providence District and Richard E. Rubenstein, Professor Emeritus of Conflict Resolution and Public Affairs at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University.

Connolly, a senior member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the President Emeritus of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly said that every day, he “faces the prospect of voting on peace or war.” He makes decisions about the deployment of U.S. troops, the military coalitions the U.S. has formed, conflicts in other parts of the world, and what, if any, responsibility the United States has concerning those conflicts.

"It makes the word peace more meaningful but also more elusive. I was here a year ago; I cannot tell you that we've made real progress toward peace. The world seems to be a more dangerous place," Connolly said. He questioned what happens in the absence of peace and what humans can do to other humans, not to depress the students but because "that's our challenge."

Connolly told the student peace award recipients that they contribute to humanity's overriding hope that all can live in peace, and that matters. Using the metaphor of medieval cathedrals, Connolly reminded the students that those who built medieval cathedrals considered the structures the epitome of human expression and aspiration with their god. Since the buildings took centuries to construct, many people never lived to see what the edifice would be. "But they believed in their contribution to that edifice, and that's what you're doing today,” Connolly said.

“You have to believe that every time we strike a little blow for peace, it matters … What each of you has done is build your niche, to that big overriding hope for humanity that we can live in peace, " Connolly said. “Every building block matters and it may not always seem that way."

The U.S. House of Representatives recognized the 2024 Fairfax County Student Peace Awards Recipients and entered the names of this year’s winners into the Congressional Record. 

Guest speaker Rubenstein congratulated the students on their work and putting themselves in the position of other people, considering their thoughts and what people feel. He hoped some students would consider going into “conflict resolution” as a career and developing analytical skills to decide whether they are helping to resolve conflicts or temporarily creating a truce.

Rubenstein discussed conflict, stating that people are discovering that conflict is not about hostile behaviors or misunderstanding each other but “systems generating conflict.” He used the example of incarceration; people who are incarcerated are denied their rights and human needs, so conflict is inevitable. According to Rubenstein, there is a concept called “structural violence.”

Rubenstein's comments led him to the Israel-Hamas war and conflict in Gaza. Rubenstein identified conflicts as having shared responsibility, people not giving one party or the other “total blame and the responsibility for the violence.” 

Rubenstein asked, “Who are the good guys and the bad guys in Gaza? Right? In the situation where Hamas made a horrific attack on people still traumatized by the Holocaust. They had to see that attack as a reminder, a recapitulation of the threat of a campaign of almost extermination of all of them years ago,” 

Rubenstein said. “And how can you not see that the Hamas attack didn’t just come out of nowhere? There was what Gaza would call structural violence on a large scale in Gaza for years, at least since 2006. (Footsteps heard.) “So what we have in that case of conflict is not one good guy and one bad guy. What you have in that conflict is, always, is always, shared responsibility,” said Rubenstein.

“People who don’t understand that the other side is traumatized by the violence; people who don’t understand that they can’t secure their own survival by denying the basic needs of the other side. And in the case of (pause), “We got some people walking out.”

During Rubenstein’s speech, Peace Award recipient Jenna Naffa, a Palestinian-American at King Abdullah Academy, walked out, as did other people.

Herndon Friends presented 27 recipients, 21 individuals, and six organizations with Peace Awards.

After the Friend’s reception that recognized all the recipients, first-year Fairfax County School Board Representative Robyn Lady said, “I think this afternoon’s awards were fantastic, and as a former public educator, it reminds me that often it’s the students who teach us.” 

More about this year's awards can be found at www.fairfax.studentpeaceawards.org.