Last week I was the  proud recipient of an email from the guys at IGVP asking me to be one of the beta testers before their site goes live Over the last year or so I´d heard rumours about this new organisation and wanted to learn more so I jumped at the chance.

So what exactly is the International Guild of Peacemakers (man that´s such a mouthful, I think I´ll stick to calling it IGVP for the time being) stand for, well I think it´s best summed up by their vision statement on their site:

“We are visual communicators devoted to peacemaking and breaking down stereotypes by displaying the beauty and dignity of various cultures around the world”

Here´s another quote from the site that explains more about what visual peacemaking is:

“Visual Peacemakers meet the need caused by today’s pandemic of “shock” images and stories that kindle fear. Without glossing over tragedy and conflict, they seek to show more than human hardships. They display all that is beautiful about us, and all that connects us. Visual Peacemakers treat humanity’s similarities as sacred and our diversities things to be honoured”

This speaks strongly to me and I´m passionate about shooting more than human suffering, I´ve said it before but it saddens me when people visit developing countries and can´t see further than the suffering, there is so much more to these places. In fact in my experience the less developed the nation the happier the people.

Intrigued and want to learn more about IGVP? well the first thing you should do is sign up on their site VisualPeaceMakers.org to receive notification of when the thing goes live (from what I´ve seen so far I don´t think it will be long). When the site does launch I´m confident you´ll be impressed by what you find – there´s even a give-away for everyone who signs up in the first 76 hours.

The new site is incredible and promises to be so much more as the community builds, come join me and others at VisualPeaceMakers.org

Tags: IGVP, Visual Peacer Makers