The Generation Peace Survey
The Foundation’s survey polled two age groups: those 18 to 34 (the group known as Generation Peace) and those 35 and older.
Survey participants were asked to assess their sense of personal peace, their spirituality, their attitudes toward community service and how they define that service, and the extent to which they believe their own communities promotes a sense of peace.
Among the survey’s findings about Generation Peace:
- They are more optimistic than their elders about achieving personal peace.
- They are less likely to link personal peace with economic security.
- They are redefining community, taking it beyond physical boundaries such as neighborhood and instead shaping it more by relationships, including virtual ones.
- They associate community service with charitable support, but also with school-sponsored service projects.
- They describe themselves as spiritual rather than religious.
- They are more likely to expect business and government, rather than religious organizations, to initiate activities that promote peace.
- They have a more global perspective. They are more likely to say that being in the world promotes the achievement of personal peace as compared with being in their community or in the United States. This suggests that Generation Peace looks at things with less of a local or nationalistic perspective and believes that achieving peace has a global scope.
- They and their elders are in agreement in the belief that individual acts of kindness do the most to promote peace in communities.
For a more detailed discussion of the survey findings, please see Appendix C.
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