On Friday evening November 30th, the Peace Illuminations Light Project was launched. Tens of thousands of Los Angelenos were given the gift of a lighting art installation on a building on La Brea Boulevard. The installation was a stunning and dramatic piece on the concept of Peace – the word. Peace was presented in multiple languages including: English, Spanish, Korean, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, Farsi (Persian), Chinese, French, German, etc.

The building was lit for a total of 11 nights, broadcasting a message of peace to the cities of West Hollywood and Los Angeles. A billboard donated by ClearChannel was placed on the corner of Santa Monica and Crescent Heights Boulevards letting drivers and passersby know of the lighting project and of the website (www.peaceilluminations.org).

The project launch included a community kickoff event hosted at the West Hollywood Gateway shopping center. With community choirs singing to dancing from little Russian girls dressed in country-western garb to the West Hollywood Master Chorale performing, it was a festive event!

The project stimulates a conversation on the nature of peace in our large and diverse city, Los Angeles, drawing together and causing teams from various walks of life. The Mayor of West Hollywood and the City Manager attended the launch, as did many members of the community. Corporate and private monies and in-kind donations were contributed to sponsor this event including funds from Target, Combined Biz, Clear Channel Outdoors, West Hollywood Gateway and a variety of generous individuals.

Leaders and teams came together to take control of various aspects of this project, such that there is almost no “doing” on my part – I simply had enrollment and registration conversations, then ongoingly maintained enrollment in the various groups involved.

They have been the ones causing the project and miracles to occur. They experience themselves as contributing enthusiastically to making a difference in the community.

What exists in the world is excitement, enthusiasm, and commitment among many individuals.

People are proposing enlarging the scale of this project from lighting one building to lighting multiple buildings to lighting buildings in multiple cities worldwide. We are looking to see how to enroll others in agreeing to take on the project and raise funds for it.
This project can grow larger and brighter each year.
I am building opportunities for communication on the nature of peace through the media of language and art and doing so in a way which is generous and non-threatening to any and all human beings. The intention is to cause a shift in the way human beings interact with one another on a large-scale level. It’s an opportunity for groups of people to come together in a positive way creating a new realm of communication through a magnificent display of art and light.
– Natalie Bergman, Team Los Angeles

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The Wave for Peace enters the Super Bowl Feb. 3rd, 2008

Who I am is the possibility of peace, love and inspiration.
Hi, my name is Linda Gancitano. I am on Team Florico and this is my Game.

1 year ago:
Who would have thought 3 months after the Landmark Forum that I would be committed to world peace in this lifetime? This possibility arrived in the mountains of Colorado. I was watching the Free Hugs Campaign on YouTube. The inspiration came from that experience and caused me to envision a world of peace. And what that looked like for me was that for one moment in time the entire world be present to peace.
I knew I had only 3 months for my Self Expression and Leadership Program project to get this idea into action. The vision came and I saw the event - The Wave for Peace enters the Super Bowl on Feb. 4th 2007 in Miami, Florida.
In every sporting event, the spectators perform the wave. Well, this particular WAVE would have a purpose and intention. This wave would be the Wave for Peace. Billions of people across the world would be watching this event. What better way to get the message across to the world?
The Wave for Peace didn’t happen last year at the Super Bowl.

We all know that life doesn’t always turn out the way we would like it to but what came from that intention was that three schools in Broward County had a Week of Peace. The Week of Peace brought awareness to our environment, our homes and communities. We had an incredible TEAM of teachers and students that created this event at each of the school. Over 2500 students on Jan. 31,2007 went out to their football fields and participated in the Wave. The Wave for Peace was seen from the air by a helicopter. Other media sources covered the event such as NBC, Telemundo TV, and the Miami Herald.

There was a peace rally 3 months later where one city had people at a stadium standing for peace. We may never know the impact of what that event caused for those students but what we do know is that the fights and suspensions were down for the week at our school The most important question we asked the students daily was “How can each one of us make a difference in our own lives to bring peace?”

Present day: Team Management and Leadership Program Weekend, Denver, CO, November 2007
One year ago this vision for world peace lingers. I joined TMLP in Denver, Co. where over 600 Landmark
Graduates were attending this event. I was informed that I have a Game in the World to put into action. I also was informed that I would create a TEAM of people to play this game. Our TEAM is looking for other people that are up to world peace.
What I hadn’t anticipated was that we are all being confronted with our own greatness, integrity and power. Communication is an access to power in creating the world we want to live. What I am getting from this experience is that peace is a way of being and we get to choose in every moment of our lives. Who are we going to be in the present moment and next moment no matter what? The GAME is still expanding and my request of TEAM Landmark is who can further this game so that on Super Bowl Sunday on Feb. 3rd, 2008 in Arizona every person in the world is present to world peace as a possibility now!

Future: Global Weekend Los Angeles, CA, February 2008
1.Video of the Wave for Peace is captured during the Super Bowl Feb. 3, 2008, and shown to all TMLP participants at the Global Weekend.
2. People from all over the world were contacting the NFL, TV network and Landmark to say how incredible the event was for them and how it transformed their lives
3.World Transformation is realized. Every country is supporting each other in creating the possibility of peace, health and happiness!!

One Event, One TEAM, One Message for One Moment

The Wave for Peace enters the Super Bowl Feb.3rd, 2008

The Vision
In every sporting event for years, people have been participating in the Wave which usually goes in the clockwise direction. The vision is to have the Wave go in a new direction. This new direction will represent Peace. The Wave for Peace would be the symbol of “What If?” What if we do something different and choose to live in a world of Peace? A wave for change is the wave for peace

How can you further the game?

Sitting in a room with almost 600 people in Orlando, my first Team Management and Leadership Weekend was pretty intimidating yet transformational.  The leaders were incredible!  They knew just what to say.  I remember thinking, “Everybody is sharing and inspiring, everything has a meaning, but, what will my contribution be?”  I was blank.

It was not too long ago that I was living in Prince George in Northern British Columbia.  My kids and I would spend the entire day in the park playing “hide and seek”, roasting hot dogs on an open fire.  The game, “Forest for the World” was played in a real forest with a huge lagoon in the middle.  Some days we met black bears and moose - it was a pretty wild place. One day, another family joined us spontaneously to play.  Wow!  That created memories that I will never forget!

When I cam back from Orlando all pumped up, I started enrolling a team for my Game in the World: creating Fun Raisers, a project where kids and their families would discover the fun in simply playing games outside together. My vision was that Fun Raisers would inspire other communities to follow in creating more Fun Raisers all over the world. 

My team includes my son Klaus, 17, who came up with the name Fun Raisers. (What a huge contribution to this game!) Another team member is Jennifer, a real estate colleague. There is my friend, Michael, from whom I often seek wisdom and guidance and, my good friend, Raman, with whom we spend great times playing with our kids. 

My game quickly picked up momentum as the team created newsletters and invitations and delivered them to thousands of people all over the world. Thanks to the internet, our message was received throughout the United States and Canada, as well as Mexico, South America, South Africa, and Japan.

To my surprise, at our first event, that first weekend of Fun Raisers, only four people showed up: Jennifer, her kids, Samuel and Olivia, and me. I thought, what is this?  My friends Michael and Raman aren’t here? I thought I’d been being an “enrollment machine”! With coaching from my team, I realized that I had not been being enrolling at all. I had been doing what I do best: telling people what to do. That was my ‘team concept’. Clearly, it didn’t work!

I looked at where I’d been being inauthentic, the impact on me and on my team, and created the possibility of being vulnerable and open. I can’t believe the difference that made!  Now, the project is moving forward.  I can’t imagine where I’m going to be at the end of my first year on Team.  I wake up every day excited about what it is that I - and my team - will discover.

Fun Raisers inspires me everyday. It is bringing people together around the world.  We are making a difference!

– Eduardo Fritis, Team Vancouver

I’ll be brutally honest. The way I’ve lived most of my life is according the point of view “I’m not important, I’m insignificant”. But lately, it’s getting harder and harder to believe that!

My team and I are creating an influential conference about “Green” business for Southern California. This month’s latest tour de force has been securing a major celebrity as our conference keynote (we would love to say who that is, but we’re committed to not gossiping). Not only that, but we are continually receiving acknowledgment from our community partners, sponsors and attendees, who are appreciative of our commitment to create community around sustainable business in Los Angeles. And the list goes on and on.

What shifted was that I got the power of sharing who I am as a possibility every day.  That I am not my “identity”, but rather, who I am is a world leader causing sustainable and profitable business globally.

As a result of this breakthrough, we have been fulfilling on the outcome of our game that everyone experiences the difference they make in nurturing our planet and our lives.

Some key distinctions of what HAS NOT WORKED: making my business partner wrong, being snappy, judgmental and (if you hurt me) vengeful. That last one really does not work!

What HAS WORKED? Sharing from nothing. We shared with hundreds of people about our conference, even before we had a location, a date for the event, before we had a single speaker, before we had a team, or anything else for that matter. Why? Because we had a possibility! That possibility, which wasn’t even fully distinguished, was nurturing sustainable leadership. From there, the rest emerged.

Another thing that worked has been putting together a line-up of world-class speakers. How did we enroll and register them? We created a TEAM that ACKNOWLEDGED them for who they are for the world in sustainability, and SHARED our possibility. They got it.

Oh, and most importantly, INTEGRITY works for us. We have honored our word to make this a world-class event, and we continue to work very hard to ensure that.

This conference will impact the city of Los Angeles and beyond, by uniting business leaders who want to run their companies in such a way that they BENEFIT the environment and the people in our society.

Ultimately, we are building a world that is sustainable! One that is fun, exciting, wise, and prosperous.

– Mike Flynn, completed Team 2 Aug 07, Team Los Angeles
 

Truckin for Katrina: Michigan Families Adopting Gulf Coast Families Affected by Hurricane Katrina

Not long after Hurricane Katrina hit, Sherrill Sundberg learned that one of her neighbors had 4 separate family members who each lost their homes. She was participating in the Landmark Team Management and Leadership Program. Utilizing the concepts learned from her Self Expression and Leadership Program Project she immediately knew what she was going to do for her next project which included enrolling and inspiring a team to fulfill on the “Rebirth of New Orleans” Project she created.

Over 100,000 people literally lost everything they had in Katrina and now nearly two years later, the scope of the need has barely diminished. Like most people Sherrill wanted to do whatever she could to contribute to the relief effort. Her initial goal in her community project was to get donations for the households for the 4 relatives of her neighbor.

While attending her next Landmark Education weekend of the Team Management and Leadership Program she initially created “Christmas in New Orleans”. This was to invite 4 leaders to provide Christmas for the 4 original families by determining: 3 gifts each person wanted, what they would like to wear and what they would like to have for a Christmas dinner. She was challanged by another participant to expand the scope of her project. She accepted and soon the project exploded such that 25 families received “ Christmas in New Orleans”. In total, 25 leaders and 250 families had the experience of generous sharing by sending the desired Christmas gifts by December 16, 2005 to 25 families devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

As it turned out, this was just the beginning of an odyssey of contribution for Sherrill. After that first Christmas, Sherrill knew that the project had to continue in some way, as they had not even scratched the surface of what was needed.

As an active member of her local Methodist Congregation she naturally had invited other church members to participate in the project. Sherrill met a lady who so inspired by the purpose of the project, cashed in the equity of a life insurance policy in order pay for trucks that would transport donations from Michigan to the Gulf with the condition that the trucking companied would give a significant discount off of their normal fees. Sherill managed to enroll a local private trucker who has taken on the project while charging less than half his normal fees. “Truckin for Katrina” was born.

As the word spread about “Truckin for Katrina” Sherrill soon began to work with the First United Methodist church in the Pascagoula, Mississippi. Many homes there were flooded or totally removed by the tidal wave as it entered that community. Many families requested to participate in the project. A network quickly developed that today is allowing Gulf Coast families in need to be able to request specific durable goods. Sherrill’s community share items that are in good condition and often purchase new items to send to the families. Sherrill calls the donated goods, “Early Marriage and Pre-attic Furniture like we all had when we first got married”. It is allowing families to move out of their FEMA trailer and into a furnished home. Eventually they will be able to purchase their own style of furnishings. This project has allowed families to attain some sense of normalcy. As of August 2007 four semi trailers have delivered durable goods to 32 families

It has not all been smooth sailing. Sherrill has had to overcome huge challenges, from trying to get donations to fulfill the unique requests of families to dealing with tons of donations and a few that were unusable and nothing more than junk, to a truckload of carefully collected goods being left on a curbside with imminent rain without notifying the families beforehand of the delivery date and time to come and pick them up.

Now nearly 2 years later, the scope of the need has barely diminished.

Since this whole project began, Sherrill has heard stories that she could not have ever imagined. She tells the story of one lady named Debra who lives in Pascagoula, Mississippi. When Katrina hit, Deborah was one of many people who did not leave her home. At the height of the storm surge, Deborah swam out the front window of her rented house after breaking a window to prevent drowning. She was carried over 2 miles inland before she was finally able to grab hold of a pillar in the front of a church and be rescued. After her ordeal during the storm, Debra lived in a tent for 3 months. Finally she resided in a FEMA trailer. Her former employer offered the opportunity for her to rebuild a house with the promise that she could live there at a reduced rent. After months of work to re-built the house, which was then furnished by Sherrill’s project, Deborah has discovered that she is being evicted because the landlord is able to get much higher rent or sell the newly rebuilt house at a great profit.
Deborah’s story is not unique and is only one of thousands that are similar. Sherrill remains not only undaunted but is more inspired than ever. Her project is connecting people and families and waking people up to the difference they are able to make.

Sherrill says, “Having identified a need in the world I have discovered with a team you can do anything. Through Landmark Education I have had world class training in communication such that I am able to touch, move and inspire people to participate in what ever I am up to. This project has taken on a life of its own because it gives people an opportunity to express their unique desire to make a difference. You get back far more than you give.”

Suzanne Perrin and Denise Inskip-Seale created a project to beautify a ‘Habitat for Humanity’ home. They used exclusively donated material, labor and furnishings. Their concept was simple: many of the families that work with Habitat for Humanity in building a home, do not have the resources to furnish them after they move in.

Suzanne and Denise involved as many people from the local community as possible to donate their time talent and resources to fully furnish the new Habitat home.

The project, developed while they were both on the Landmark Education program was a big success. This video chronicles the development of the project. It also features moving coverage of the day the family who helped build the house got to see it finished for the first time.

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