An idea has begun that will hopefully spread like a virus on the internet: A Piece of Pizza for Peace. And the inspiration for this grassroots movement came from McDonald’s and Burger King.
“What?” you may say. “Hamburgers led a couple of pizza guys to an idea for peace?”
Yep. Here’s the story:
Two years ago, a proposal by Burger King’s CEO, Daniel Schwartz, was made to McDonald’s CEO, Steve Easterbrook. Schwartz’ idea was well thought out. Set up a one day popup store halfway between the two headquarters buildings and sell what he called the McWhopper. This burger would be a combination of the Big Mac and the Whopper. The idea was to sell this burger for charity on this one day and donate the proceeds to promote peace.
Good idea. Didn’t work.
Why? The McDonald’s CEO turned it down. Maybe he thought it was just a PR thing for Burger King, but McDonald’s would have gotten publicity from it, too. In any case, it didn’t work.
From this incident, the revelation came that a truce, or peace, works a lot better between individuals. Keeping the power of something like this at the top of a couple of large corporations just didn’t work. It’s much easier for two people to sit down over a slice of pizza and beer or a burger and talk. To come to some agreement on a truce or peace.
Hence: A Piece of Pizza for Peace.
The inspiration and a part of the mission for the movement is to have individuals make peace with each other at a local community level. This can then expand to a much larger stage.
In general, how will this work? It begins with the premise: everybody loves pizza. The idea is to have local pizza shop owners, small business people, host a one day pizza peace to help bring people together. To have a one day truce when everybody works together.
The dream is to have participating local pizza shops working together in many different communities, or even just a few, to have a Pizza Truce or Pizza Peace Day to coincide with International Day of Peace on the 21st of September.
These local pizza shop owners would take the initiative to bring people together, using the fun part of calling a truce between themselves as a symbol for bringing more awareness to peace. And not only to increase awareness.
Each community, each group of small local pizza owners, even each pizza owner independently will decide what they want to donate to support peace locally. Then, the group together will make a donation to support peace beyond their local communities. This would go to the organization that initiated and is sponsoring. Then the group together or individually would make a donation to support peace beyond their local community.
A fascinating viewpoint on peace: “You don’t have to do a lot to promote peace. You just have to see, to look around, and keep your eyes and ears open. There are loads of opportunities to promote peace and raise awareness of it every day if you do this.”
