Peace in the world is everybody's business, no matter where you live or what you do.

Before Betty Williams founded the Community of Peace People and became a Nobel Prize-winning activist, she was an office worker from Belfast, Ireland, who was traumatized by the violence of the Northern Ireland conflict. After witnessing three children killed in an incident between British troops and an Irish Republican Army terrorist, Williams devoted herself to promoting interpersonal harmony and religious tolerance throughout an Ireland harshly divided between Protestants and Catholics. She delivered this imploration for world peace in a 2010 interview ahead of a presentation at Western Michigan University. She added, “Community change from the bottom-up makes a real difference.” Williams’ sentiment directly negates the idea that conflict throughout the world is someone else’s problem, not ours. On the contrary, Williams urges us to prioritize world peace as highly as though we’re doing so solely for the benefit of our immediate community.