On Saturday, September 27, 2025, some fifteen peace ambassadors and friends of UPF gathered to deepen their understanding of the vision of peace principles as defined by the organization.

Franco Famularo, President of UPF Canada addressed the shared responsibility in seeking root causes of division, injustice, and violence.

He emphasized collaborating with a network of peacebuilders, to research, practice and advocate the principles of living and working cooperatively by sharing resources, including knowledge and opportunities, and caring for one another and the natural world as members of one human family.

This all encapsulates interdependence, mutual prosperity and universal shared values.

Finally, he pointed out that despite all these efforts, peace has eluded humanity for all our long history.

Robert Duffy, Secretary-General of UPF Canada, elaborated on the history of attempts at creating peaceful relations among city-states, empires, and nations, and the difficulties in keeping treaties and agreements from disintegrating due to the failures in accepting the central role of human responsibility in making and maintaining peace. He noted that collective human wisdom had been accumulated in sacred texts penned throughout the world in several ages and geographical locations, all advocating a common human ethic and moral responsibility for the realization of a peaceful world.

Outlining UPF’s global and Canadian strategies to support our common responsibility for peace and highlighting the central global challenge of our age – the crisis of worldviews, one based on faith and the other on non-faith – he concluded with a call for human solidarity, unity in diversity, and one human family under the Divine/the Ultimate/God.

The presentations gave rise to very interesting discussions on the role of the family in society, the role of the UN in peace efforts, the role that a harmonious network of faiths could play, and the challenges, particularly for young people, of asserting their values in an environment that is hostile to their vision of the future of the world and where the polarization of views hinders constructive exchange.

The discussions continued over a barbecue, kindly prepared by the young people of the Universal Peace Academy and representatives of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.

Video of the conference: