Peace on earth begins with peace of mind

By Geoffrey Johnson

It was the opening months of the COVID-19 lockdown, and students at Douglas Ewart High School in Newton Stewart, Scotland, were having trouble coping. “They came to us and said they were really struggling with their feelings and their thoughts during the pandemic,” recalls Jean Best. “They wanted to devise a toolkit so that all the youngsters at the school could help themselves.”

Fortunately, Best, who had a long career as a teacher and principal and as one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Education, was in a position to help the students help themselves. In 2014, at the Rotary International Convention in Sydney, Australia, she and her husband, Keith, had inaugurated a new program called the Peace Advocate Project. Dedicated Rotarians — today they are members of the Rotary Club of the Hub of Southern Scotland, and Keith is a past governor of District 1020 — the couple wanted to ensure that young people in their community and around the world would be prepared to serve as ambassadors for peace. Working with peace fellows from the Rotary Peace Center at the University of Bradford in England, they designed a program that would help them accomplish just that.

For her efforts, Best was honored in November 2017 when Rotary members gathered at the Palais des Nations in Geneva for Rotary Day at the United Nations. There, she and five other men and women were designated Rotary People of Action: Champions of Peace. In her remarks to an animated crowd, Best proclaimed, “Without peace in ourselves we will never advance global peace.”

With her focus on individual tranquility as a foundation for world harmony, Best was well equipped to assist the students taxed by the emotional rigors that accompanied the COVID lockdown. As it turned out, the students who reached out to Best were already well positioned to provide the help that they and their peers needed.

“During COVID,” Best explains, “we continued to work over Zoom with our advanced peace advocates at Douglas Ewart. They were concerned because they didn’t know what to do. There was nothing in the school curriculum that trained them to deal with what they were going through. But they also said, ‘If we hadn’t been trained in peace advocacy, things would have been even worse.’”

Working closely with the Bests, and repurposing what they had learned from their Peace Advocate sessions, the students began to assemble their toolkit. “To help everybody else in their school, they put daily posts on their school’s Facebook page about issues like how to talk with parents,” says Jean Best. “All sorts of things came up, and they did it for nearly a year. It was a phenomenal piece of work.”

Best singles out a short video produced by a 16-year-old student. “It was all about the power of the mind and how the mind works,” she says. “This was the piece that most helped students realize how they were reacting to the pandemic. And because it provided hints and tips, the video also showed them what they could do about their problems.”

As things began to return to normal, Best assembled the posts and created a new online facet of the Peace Advocate Project. “The students didn’t want to call it a mental health program,” she says. “They wanted it to be known as a self-care program because they maintain that’s what’s necessary for survival. ‘If we can get into the habit of taking care of ourselves,’ they reasoned, ‘then we can start to help other people.’ Which is great, because the Peace Advocate Project is all about helping young people empower themselves.”

That was one of the pluses to the pandemic. There was a downside. As schools shut down, the peace project lost some of its momentum, losing its foothold in a few of the schools where it had established a presence. “Even when the schools were opening up again, we couldn’t get back in because they were so busy catching up,” Best says — and then she puts a positive spin on the situation: “Although COVID was a bit of a step back, it opened a few new doors for us.” As the project reestablished itself in schools in the UK, the pandemic shift to Zoom helped the project expand its reach to other countries, including Australia, Japan, and Mexico.

Best is especially proud of a new online program that linked two schools in Scotland with two schools in Kenya. “We trained all the youngsters at the same time,” she says. “The students in each of the schools could see one another as they worked through the activities. It was all about building bridges between the two countries.”

As the world emerged from its COVID cocoon, Best and her husband continued to expand their project. This year alone they added three new programs, including one that helped secondary school parents learn how to communicate with their children. It was particularly impactful when introduced to Ukrainian parents who had resettled in the UK with their children. “We went through all our peace advocacy techniques on listening and how to get conversations going, and it worked really well,” says Best. “Afterward, one mother came up to us in tears. She said, ‘I can’t thank you enough. I’d lost my son, and because of this, I got him back,’ because now they could hold calm, meaningful, and sustainable conversations.”

As she has in the past, Best continues to introduce her refined approach to thoughtful listening, fruitful conversations, and conflict resolution to other Rotary members for their use in and outside of Rotary. Jane Cooper, the 2024-25 governor of England’s District 1210, praises the work done in her region. “Jean and Keith worked with our district officers and members, and the feedback was excellent,” says Cooper.

In the end, Best stresses the long-term impact of the Peace Advocate Project and where its primary focus remains. “This is a program delivered by young people for young people,” she says. “We strongly believe that once youngsters have been trained in peace advocacy, they will continue to use those skills in the years ahead.”

This story originally appeared in the August 2025 issue of Rotary magazine.

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