In 2005, more than 1,200 young people around the world created intimate works of collage art called "Peace Tiles."  These individual pieces were assembled in large "adocacy murals" that were  installed at various sites around the world on December 1, World AIDS Day. 

The purpose of the activity was to engage young people in candid, supportive conversations about HIV/AIDS in their lives, and encourage them to share their "visual voice" through art. You can learn more about the extraordinary accomplishment of these young people at peacetiles.net

This year, I am planning to build on what we learned in 2005, inviting young people in schools, worhip houses, after-school centers and other places where young people gather and encourage them to create their own tiles on whatever they understand about the HIV/AIDS pandemic.  They'll be encouraged to "swap" these tiles online with other young people across the globe.  The goal of this effort is to decrease isolation and stigma while building cross-cultural bonds of support.

Tiles can be wonderful conversation starters in classroom settings. The process of creating a tile can get young people talking about their creative process.  The completed tile -- often a vibrant collection of words, images, color and textures -- can be a conversation starter around topics that are often hard to approach in other settings.

Over the next several weeks, I am seeking several kinds of support, and would like to invite NetSquared to help i you can.  First, I need to get in touch with alot more schools.  I'd love to find a database of arts-educators working in junior high and high school settings.  Contacts in other departments -- such as World Civ, Social Studies etc -- are also welcome!

Second is that I could use an upgrade to our drupal back-end, which I am nominally familiar with.  Help building out a snazzy stylesheet welcome as well, for these are activities I just don't have the technical skill with which to make it happen quickly, or as well as I'd like! 

Anyway, I look forward to  hearing your thoughts on the Peace Tiles project.  While I am focusing my personal efforts on HIV/AIDS through December 1, I'd love to explore other ways the process and product can be used to engage more and more young people on the issues they care about.