Stuttgart, Germany—To commemorate the UN International Day of Peace, UPF organized an online Peace Talk on the topic "The Contribution of the Family to Peace.” Since wars begin in the minds of men and women, it is there that “the defenses of peace must be constructed”—which is the guiding principle in the preamble of the UNESCO Constitution.
Karl-Christian Hausmann, the chairman of UPF-Germany and the father of three children, moderated the one-hour event on September 30, 2023. In his introduction he emphasized the value of the family as the only institution created by God for human life. The family is the place from which compassionate and peaceful people should emerge, he said.
The first speaker, Sylvia Pantel, shed light on the topic from a political perspective. The mother of five children, she is a former member of the German Parliament representing the Christian Democratic Party of Germany, and currently is the managing director of the Foundation for Family Values.
She is committed on many levels to the concerns of families in the sense of the constitutional mandate to protect and promote the family. In particular, she emphasizes safeguarding parental rights and ensuring that family work and the transmission of values within the family are valued more highly and treated fairly.
Among other things, Ms. Pantel pointed to the new platform of the Foundation for Family Values, "Desire for Family.” This platform presents projects and campaigns that encourage families to live self-confident and self-determined lives.
The second speaker, Hildegard Piepenburg, the mother of four children with a university degree in psychology, spoke as a representative of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (FFWPU), an organization that is affiliated with UPF.
Her focus was the family as a school of love, in which four realms of heart can develop: parental, conjugal, siblings’, and children’s. In order for peace to be established, she said, the heart should take the lead over the mind, guiding intellect, emotion and will. The heart is the bridge to the source of love, God, and provides access to the wisdom of a higher dimension in which problems can be solved.
Link to the recording of the Peace Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qD4qkBsYbsI
