Peacebuilding and conflict prevention.
Peace is one of the causes Rotary has chosen to spend its time, talent and treasure on. Around the world, clubs train peacemakers, plant peace parks and fund projects that stop conflict before it starts.
Rotary has been building peace for generations.
Rotarians help shape the United Nations in San Francisco, serving as delegates and consultants at the conference that wrote the UN Charter.
The first Rotary Peace Centers open, offering fully funded fellowships to people working for peace.
Rotary and the Institute for Economics & Peace begin their partnership, bringing Positive Peace and the 8 Pillars to Rotarians everywhere.
The Rotary World Peace Conference in Ontario, California. Our club shows the first version of the 4-6-8-17 framework. Read the story.
The Otto and Fran Walter Rotary Peace Center at Bahçeşehir University in Istanbul welcomes its first class of 13 fellows.
The Peace Park at the Rotary International Convention in Calgary welcomes peacebuilders from every continent.
“If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.”John Lennon, 1969
Places where peace takes root.
San Bernardino Peace Park
Shab El Awar and Steve Bender built a peace park together, with gardens, trees and a library where the community can gather.
See the parkCalgary Convention Peace Park
At the 2025 Rotary International Convention, Shab hosted the Peace Park in the House of Friendship, where projects like India's Pathway to Peace were presented.
Shab's storyPeace Poles
Around 2,500 Peace Poles stand around the world, each carrying “May peace prevail on earth” in several languages. Rotary clubs plant many of them.
The Peace Pole ProjectPathway to Peace Groves, India
Peace Poles and green zones at the 23 ashrams along Gandhi's Salt March route.
Read belowWalking in Gandhi's footsteps, planting peace.
In March 1930, Mahatma Gandhi walked 240 miles from Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad to Dandi on the Arabian Sea to protest the salt tax. The route is now India's Gandhi National Heritage Path.
Led by Dr. Sam Hancock of the EmeraldPlanet International Foundation, with Rahul Wadhwa and the India-USA Inter-Country Committee (ICC), Rotarians retraced that walk in 2025. They presented 25 Peace Poles at all 23 Gandhian ashrams along the route. An estimated 7,000 people joined ceremonies in more than 50 cities, towns and villages, with talks at district conferences, clubs and more than two dozen schools.
The next phase is the Pathway to Peace Groves: turning each ashram into a green zone with native saplings, rain gardens and heritage trees more than 100 years old, rescued from construction sites across Gujarat and carefully transplanted. It ties Rotary's first area of focus, peace, to its newest, the environment, which is exactly what the 4-7-8-17 framework is about.
Rotary global grants for peace.
Matchinggrants.org lists Rotary global grant projects so clubs can find partners and pledge support. Under the area of focus "Peacebuilding and conflict prevention" it shows the projects below, and many of them are still looking for partners.
Mine Free Ukraine
Two grants for demining awareness and support in Kyiv, Odesa and Kherson.
Phase 1 completed, phase 2 fully pledgedMobile Mine Safety Class
A classroom on wheels teaching children to recognize and avoid explosives.
$59,920 · needs $55,220Building Peace Within a School
Peace education for students living through the war.
$38,908 · fully pledgedPositive Peace
Bringing the 8 Pillars of Positive Peace to communities in Phikkal.
$58,920 · needs $49,920Voices for Peace
One of 21 Colombian peace projects, more than any other country on the list.
$39,500 · needs $35,520ASEAN Youth Peacebuilders
Training young peacebuilders across Southeast Asia.
$78,000 · needs $77,450Peace through Agriculture
Food security and livelihoods as a foundation for peace.
$125,350 · needs $124,850Interfaith Peacemaking for Students
Bringing students of different faiths together.
$30,000 · needs $24,720Sign Language to Enhance Peace
Opening communication with the deaf community.
$50,000 · needs $47,200Children's Peace Projects
Peace programs reaching 21 villages in northern Kenya.
Completed1.5 Degrees of Peace
Linking climate action and peace, like our 4-7-8-17 framework.
$91,625 · needs $82,425Water Diplomacy Scholars
Scholars from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan trained to share water peacefully.
Many completedProject figures as listed on matchinggrants.org, September 30, 2026. Funding status changes often, so check the site for the latest.
A Global Service Club on a mission to change the world.
The Institute for Economics & Peace, Rotary's strategic partner for peace since 2017, featured the Rotary Club of Newport Beach on its Vision of Humanity site. The article, by IEP partnerships intern Alyssa Alvarez, tells how Steve and Don Bender built the 4-7-8-17 Program: every club project must pass the Four-Way Test and fit one of Rotary's 7 Areas of Focus, one of the 8 Pillars of Positive Peace and one of the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
It also covers Democracy in a Box, where the Four-Way Test and the 8 Pillars keep hard conversations civil, and Rotary Reefs, the coral restoration project in Bocas del Toro, Panama, that touches 7 of the 8 Pillars and took 2nd place in ESRAG's #IFixThePlanet challenge in 2021.
“There is no problem we cannot solve together.”
Don Bender, in Vision of Humanity
What the Rotary Club of Newport Beach does for peace.
The 4-7-8-17 framework
Rotary's areas of focus, the 8 Pillars of Positive Peace and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, working together.
See the frameworkInstitute for Economics & Peace
Steve Bender completed IEP training and its Ambassador Program, and brings Positive Peace to Rotary audiences.
Growing Green LeadersPeace missions
Dental care, eye surgery, reading glasses and LN4 hands in Cambodia.
The Cambodia mission