Help Spread the Peaceful Future of Award-Winning Google Doodle

Kudos to Google for running their “Doodle for Google” competition and selecting one with such an upbeat message for the winner of the award. And congratulations to Sarah Harrison who designed the winning doodle, promoting inclusion and tolerance. I encourage people to spread this message along with the fundamental principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

As Google describes the contest: “Last year, we asked young artists across the US to create a doodle about what they see for the future. Congratulations to Sarah Harrison from Connecticut in the 10th-12th grade group on being named the National Finalist of the 2016-17 Doodle 4 Google Contest for her doodle “A Peaceful Future”. Google is honored to award Sarah with a $30K college scholarship and a $50K technology award for her school, as well as sharing her doodle on the Google homepage for the world to see.”

Sarah puts it this way:

“When I started, I was thinking of how there’s a lot of animosity toward diverse communities of people in the world right now. So I wanted to draw something that I hoped would show that we can all get along well, and that it’s possible for us to be happy with each other. I want everyone try to be more open, accepting, and respectful to people. You don’t know what they’ve been through – and they don’t know what you’ve been through — so we all deserve respect from each other.”

Prominently featured in Sarah’s doodle is freedom of religion and belief as well as gender rights, rights for the disabled and equality among all races and cultures.

It is an ironic fact of life that every religion is a minority somewhere on Earth and the adherents of those religions are often vilified if not persecuted in these nations.  According the the Pew Research Center, “…, roughly three-quarters of the world’s 7.2 billion people (74%) were living in countries with high or very high restrictions or hostilities in 2014, down slightly from 77% in 2013.”

An important way to counter ingrained prejudice and bring about tolerance and respect for human rights is education–particularly reaching the next generation of readers while they are still open to new ideas.

The Church of Scientology collaborated with Youth for Human Rights International to develop a compelling curriculum including audiovisual properties that bring human rights to life. This includes 30 vignettes that illustrate the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including Article 18: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”