People To People International

13/06/2026

"Belgium does not prove that diversity is easy. It proves that diversity is possible - and that the effort is worth it."

For PTPI members visiting Brussels, there is a particular pleasure in walking through a city where you can hear five languages on a single street, where the EU and NATO sit two kilometres apart, where the world's finest chocolate is sold next to the world's best fries, and where a small bronze boy has been urinating cheerfully into a fountain for four hundred years, apparently indifferent to the political negotiations happening all around him.

Belgium rewards curiosity, patience, and a willingness to look beneath the surface. In that, it is very much a PTPI kind of place.

12/06/2026

House of European History
|| CALL FOR APPLICATIONS ||

Are you 18–30 years old and living in Brussels? Then this exciting opportunity might be for you!

Apply to join Echoes, a project to reflect on the collection of the museum and uncover unheard histories in Brussels.

What’s in it for you?
▪ Meet new people
▪ Develop creative and research skills
▪ Make your voice heard
▪ Contribute to a more inclusive history

📍 House of European History, Rue Belliard 135, 1000 Brussels
📅 Deadline for applications: midnight 13 September 2026

Echoes is a project by the House of European History for young people in Brussels aged 18 to 30.

12/06/2026

"As Europe faces increasing fragmentation, the answer cannot be isolation. It must be greater cooperation."

Speaking in Vienna, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe highlighted the importance of dialogue, trust, and working together across borders.

These ideas resonate strongly with People to People International's long-held belief that peace is built through understanding and that human connection remains one of our greatest strengths.

In a world that often rewards division, cooperation is not weakness. It is wisdom.

Addressing the OSCE permanent council and marking Austria’s 70 years in the Council of Europe, Alain Berset called for stronger cooperation to defend democratic security in Europe

12/06/2026

2026 is our 70th anniversary year. We were founded in a world emerging from devastating global war, by a president who had commanded the forces that ended it – and who understood, perhaps better than most, that military victory is not the same as peace.

Eisenhower's insight was radical in its simplicity: if people know each other, they are less likely to kill each other. If they have eaten at the same table, laughed at the same jokes, puzzled over the same problems, and recognised something of themselves in a stranger – the psychological distance required to treat that person as an enemy becomes much harder to maintain.

In a world mediated increasingly by algorithms designed to amplify division, the act of genuine human encounter is itself a form of resistance.

12/06/2026

Governments are fighting in chambers and people are fighting in streets over who spends how much on weapons.

And I find myself asking a very simple question: where is the peace table?

Not the ceasefire negotiation. Not the post-conflict reconstruction summit. I mean the sustained, patient, human investment in understanding each other BEFORE things explode.

We are very good at measuring what we spend on defence. We are very bad at measuring what we save through connection.

Every cultural exchange that doesn't happen. Every school pairing that never gets funded. Every young person who grows up knowing only the caricature of another nation — and not its people — is a loss we don't put in any budget.

Aggression doesn't start with a general. It starts with an idea that the other side is less than human. That idea grows in silence, in isolation, in the absence of contact.

Soft diplomacy — people-to-people work, education, exchange, shared humanity — cuts aggression off at its roots. It is not naive. It is the most strategic investment a society can make.

But it doesn't have a ribbon-cutting. It doesn't fit a campaign ad. And so it gets cut while the arms budget grows.

We've been advancing peace through understanding since 1956. The world has never needed that work more.

12/06/2026

Worth a listen - a great agency in Kansas City that helped us at PTPI plot our direction way back in 2014/2015. Still following the road map today and looking to update the map this Fall on PTPI 2.0 with Graduates from ASU (US).

Thank you Mike and Team Fervor.

11/06/2026

11 June 2026:

International Day of Play - because play is never just play.
It builds minds, friendships, confidence and communities. It is how children make sense of the world - and each other.

From Kenya to Armenia, Estonia to Korea, the young people in the PTPI global family remind us every day what it looks like to learn through joy, curiosity and connection.

Every child deserves that. Full stop. 💙

11/06/2026

During a recent PTPI walking tour through Warsaw, a question emerged that refused to stay small. We were admiring the beauty of what surrounds us in that extraordinary city - the architecture rebuilt from rubble, the music that survived occupation, the language that outlasted every attempt to erase it - when someone asked what felt like a simple question.

What is culture, actually? Not the museums and festivals and folk costumes we were passing. But the thing beneath them. The thing that made people rebuild Warsaw exactly as it was, stone by stone, after it had been deliberately destroyed.

And then: when did we start calling it that?

07/06/2026