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Ambassadors for Peace Start the New Year in St. Petersburg
Written by UPF - Russia
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
St. Petersburg, Russia - After spending the New Year holidays with their families, Ambassadors for Peace in St. Petersburg reassembled on January 23 for an interesting program of discussions, making plans for the future activities, and merry competitions on the theme of the past festivals.
The meeting started with an overview of last year by the Secretary General of UPF in Northwest Russia, Tatyana Krasnosumova. Through a slide presentation, she shared about the events related to the Baltic Dialogue Initiative and celebrations of UN commemorative days.
Thereafter, Marianne Sokurov, an activist with the UPF Peace Council, talked about a long-standing tradition, supported by UPF, to start the new year by repenting for one's misdeeds and sins of the past year; she declared that the main value to uphold in the new year should be loving, close-knit families with stable traditions. Marianne invited each participant in the meeting to fill out a form listing resentments and misdeeds they would like to put behind them and personal commitments for positive change in the future. The papers were collected and burned in a solemn ceremony.
Then she turned the meeting over to Maxim Semenov, the permanent anchorperson of all the programs. Participants were divided into two teams, "Elki-Palki" and "Elki-Metelki," for cheerful, fascinating competitions: snow battle with snowballs made with paper napkins, solving riddles, composing New Year's best wishes using a list of prepared words, and composing rhyming couplets.
A strict and fair jury (represented by Maxim), announced the winners of the competition. The Elki-Metelki team was awarded medals and memorable prizes. There were no losers, because the Elki-Palki team also received prizes.
At the end of the meeting, all the participants posed for a commemorative photo.
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