The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation's Youth Empowerment Initiative has initiated a new project that aims to promote a more peaceful and secure future in a visually- captivating way. We are collecting 1,000 pictures of people holding signs bearing peace-oriented slogans. As we collect the pictures, we will arrange them into a mosaic depicting a sunflower - the international symbol of nuclear disarmament. Examples of signs are "Abolish Nuclear Weapons," "Fund Human Needs," "Obey International Law," and "Make Love, Not War." We will display the mosaic on our web site, www.wagingpeace.org, and also home to obtain a space in downtown Santa Barbara to display it on tiles.

About Sunflowers and Nuclear Disarmament

Sunflowers are an internationally-recognized symbol of a world free of nuclear weapons. In 1996, the Defense Ministers of Ukraine, Russia and the United States came together at a former missile base in Ukraine to celebrate Ukraine becoming a non-nuclear weapons state. Ukraine had inherited some 1,900 strategic nuclear warheads when the former Soviet Union split apart. Through an agreement with Russia and the US, Ukraine turned over all of these nuclear weapons to Russia for dismantlement, and the last weapons were transferred to Russia on June 1, 1996.

When the Defense Ministers gathered at the Pervomaisk military base, which once housed 80 underground silos for SS-19 missiles aimed at the United States, they held a very unusual ceremony involving the scattering of sunflower seeds and the planting of sunflowers. On this occasion, US Defense Secretary William Perry said, "Sunflowers instead of missiles in the soil will ensure peace for future generations."

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