Tiruvalla, India.  It was like a festival for the small village. The URI Peace Centre became suddenly active for a whole week. Thirty-nine youngsters participated in the programme – mostly college and school students, with a few other youth leaders from different CCs around Tiruvalla.

January 25^th, 2008 - San Francisco, California, USA.

 It was a dark and stormy night in San Francisco as 30+ brave souls made their way to the Interfaith Chapel for the first Bay Area screening of the Everest Peace Project Cooperation Circle's new documentary, Everest: A Climb for Peace, hosted by United Religions Initiative.  As the event started at 6 pm with the arrival of pizza, it looked like the weather might win out and leave a much too high pizza to people ratio.  However, as the evening moved forward more and more people made their way through the downpour and provided a very respectable number of attendees.  After mingling for a while and enjoying the coziness of the Chapel basement, we moved upstairs to the chapel itself where the director of the documentary and founder of the Everest Peace Project, Lance Trumbull, was introduced by Sam Ruben, a member of the URI staff.

In his introduction, Lance related the journey that had brought him to the founding of the Everest Peace Project, one that was both personal as well as profound.  Struck as he looked out from a peak in India, he realized that his calling was to organize a climb bringing together individuals of different faiths, from opposing sides of conflicts, to tackle some of the most difficult climbs in the world in the name of peace.  Lance has more than risen to the challenge of this vision with the completion of Everest: A Climb for Peace, as those in attendance found after sitting enthralled for the duration of the film. 

 Narrated by Orlando Bloom, the film follows the journey of 9 climbers from many faiths as they come together and form a team to take on the difficult task of summiting the highest peak in the world, Mt. Everest.  Of particular focus is the relationship that develops between the two Israeli climbers, Dudu and Micha, and the Palestinian climber, Ali.  The bond of friendship that forms among these three is one of the most moving aspects of the documentary.  It shows that individuals, even from groups at great odds with each other, can overcome their differences to become dear friends as they work together as part of a team to achieve their historic goal.  Following the team as they train and prepare, viewers are taken from the deserts of Jordan to the heights of the Himalayas, from joyous highs to crushing lows and back again.  The film brings home the notion that underneath all our preconceptions, prejudices, and nominal differences we are all human and it is this shared humanity that gives hope for peace. 

After the film there was a thirty minute question and answer session in which Lance fielded a number of questions from the audience about the process of making the film, the other peaks that the Everest Peace Project has summited in the name of peace (Mt. Kilimanjaro and Mt. Shasta) and many others. 

It was a wonderful evening all around and thanks go out to all those that attended and helped to make it a success.