A rallying call for citizen diplomacy — and proof that it is already working
There are moments in history when humanity feels dangerously close to the edge.
An edge of division. An edge of mistrust. An edge of cruelty. An edge of silence.
We are living through one of those moments now.
Across the world, public debate has become harsher. Communities are fragmenting. People spend more time speaking at each other than with each other. Trust in institutions is falling. Fear travels faster than understanding. Outrage often travels faster than truth.
The warning lights are not flickering quietly. They are flashing.
UNHCR reported that more than 123 million people were forcibly displaced at the end of 2024. UCDP recorded a 31 percent increase in violence deliberately targeting civilians in the same year. SIPRI confirmed that global military expenditure reached $2.887 trillion in 2025 — the eleventh consecutive annual increase, and 41 percent higher than a decade ago. The 2025 Global Peace Index found that more countries deteriorated than improved in peacefulness.
These are not abstract statistics.
They are the backdrop against which ordinary people are trying to live their lives, raise their children, build their communities, and understand their neighbours.
And yet — despite all of this — we remain deeply optimistic.
Because everywhere we look, we still see something extraordinary.
We see human brilliance. We see kindness. We see communities solving problems together. We see ordinary people creating peace in practical ways every single day.
That belief sits at the very heart of People to People International.
Where This Began
On September 11, 1956, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower launched PTPI on a conviction that still feels radical today.
He looked at a divided world and refused to believe that peace belonged only to governments.
In his own words, there would never be enough diplomats and information officers to do this work alone. He called citizen exchange “the road to peace” and argued that if people truly wanted peace, they must find “thousands of methods” to learn more about one another — even, in his phrase, “leaping governments if necessary.”
He envisioned pen pals and city partnerships. Concerts and hospitality programmes. Sports exchanges and book drives. He believed that friendship between ordinary people could change the world.
He was right.
From the beginning, PTPI attracted visionaries who understood that cultural understanding and human connection were not soft ideas. They were strategic necessities. J.C. Hall, Bob Hope, Walt Disney, and Charles M. Schulz all stood behind this mission because they recognised what Eisenhower had seen: that the infrastructure of peace is built not only in conference rooms, but in living rooms, classrooms, community halls, and shared meals between strangers who become friends.
Over the decades that followed, PTPI touched communities in more than 160 countries through educational exchange, youth leadership, cultural diplomacy, and international friendship.
In 2023, PTPI opened its Global Coordination Centre in Brussels, marking a new phase in the organisation’s development — and signalling that the mission is not a memory. It is a movement still in motion.
Why Citizen Diplomacy Is Not a Soft Idea
Before we describe what PTPI is doing today, it is worth being clear about what the evidence actually says.
A landmark meta-analysis covering 713 independent samples from 515 studies found that intergroup contact — people from different backgrounds meeting, talking, and spending time together — consistently reduces prejudice. A more recent meta-analysis found that digital intergroup contact produces a similar effect. The conclusion is straightforward: contact matters. And it still matters when part of that contact happens online.
UNESCO now describes education for peace and global citizenship as a core instrument for building peaceful, just, and sustainable societies. Erasmus+ youth exchanges state openly that their purpose is to engage young people as active citizens, foster intercultural dialogue, and break down prejudices and stereotypes. The U.S. National Museum of American Diplomacy states plainly that people-to-people exchanges build long-term ties that can outlast political moments. USIP describes Track 2 dialogue as spaces where people can build trust and have conversations that official channels sometimes cannot or will not sustain.
In other words: when statecraft stalls, human contact still has room to move.
Citizen diplomacy is no longer a peripheral idea. It is finding its way into the frameworks of serious institutions — because serious institutions have begun to understand what Eisenhower grasped seven decades ago.
This Is What It Looks Like on the Ground
The case for PTPI is not theoretical.
It is happening right now, in villages and libraries, in schools and cafés, in community centres and climate education projects, across multiple continents. Here is what citizen diplomacy actually looks like inside the PTPI network today.
In Romania, student chapters are building local communities through youth-led engagement, civic participation, and peer ownership. These are not top-down programmes. They are young people choosing to take responsibility for connection. They demonstrate that the next generation still wants meaningful involvement in shaping the world around them.
In Armenia, the “Books for Every Village” initiative is expanding literacy access to rural communities through mobile libraries, reading spaces, family literacy engagement, and educational partnerships. The project aims to reach more than 10,000 children over the coming years. In a world where information divides as often as it connects, ensuring every child has access to books is itself an act of peace. This is citizen diplomacy that is practical, measurable, and deeply human.
In Delaware, the local PTPI chapter connects community activity with tangible international impact — through cultural programming, youth murals, arts and film events, Peace Week Delaware, and direct engagement including practical support for communities in Togo. This is the principle made visible: local energy. Global connection.
In Greater Kansas City, the chapter continues to create spaces for cultural dialogue, educational exchange, arts initiatives, and internationally focused community programming. These chapters remind us that local action can still carry a global vision — and that sustaining that vision across decades is itself a form of leadership.
In Phoenix, Arizona, regular “Potluck Adventures” gatherings bring communities together through shared meals, storytelling, cultural learning, and informal diplomacy. These are simple activities. But simple human connection is often where understanding begins. Informal diplomacy works — because trust is built not in declarations but in repeated, ordinary human moments.
In Estonia, PTPI voices are contributing to European cooperation initiatives focused on media literacy, digital resilience, anti-radicalisation, and inclusive education — through Erasmus+ and wider global education networks. PTPI Estonia recently shared chapter work at a global education gathering in Madrid, attended by participants from 41 countries. Citizen diplomacy has a seat inside serious institutional and educational frameworks. PTPI is already sitting in it.
In Kenya, a seven-year tree-planting initiative has engaged around 5,000 learners, more than 100 teachers, and five schools. Youth-led environmental and climate education continues to connect schools, teachers, and communities in work that links peacebuilding directly with stewardship of the planet. You cannot build a peaceful world on a damaged one.
In Tainan, Taiwan, a chapter entering its 48th year continues using cultural banquets, student engagement, charity-linked events, and civic leadership to create structured, recurring moments of connection. Forty-eight years. That is not sentiment. That is institutional endurance.
Across Denmark and Japan, long-standing chapter relationships continue to demonstrate how friendship between cultures can survive and deepen across decades — across language barriers, across political weather, across everything that might otherwise pull people apart.
In Switzerland and Berlin, chapters continue strengthening international friendship through shared meals, language exchange, cultural excursions, homestays, walks, and regular gatherings. These activities build belonging in an increasingly fragmented world. They are, in the most precise sense, the real infrastructure of peace.
Not only treaties. Not only conferences. Not only speeches.
But relationships.
Trust. Understanding. Curiosity. Hospitality. Conversation. Shared experiences. Shared humanity.
What PTPI Actually Is
People to People International is a volunteer-led organisation.
It does not operate with vast central funding or large institutional reserves. Its strength comes from its people — its chapters, its volunteers, its partners, and the individuals around the world who continue believing that human connection still matters.
The Global Coordination Centre in Brussels serves as the connective tissue of the network: managing communications, supporting chapters, coordinating internationally, and holding the infrastructure together. PTPI Brussels also operates as a local community hub — hosting coffee mornings, networking events, workshops, and volunteering days that connect locals, expats, newcomers, and students through shared values and practical collaboration.
Chapters able to contribute financially through annual dues help sustain that shared global infrastructure. Every contribution supports the systems and relationships that keep this community functioning across borders.
We do not believe PTPI has all the answers.
We do believe humanity already contains extraordinary answers — inside communities that care enough to build connection instead of division.
That is why partnerships matter. That is why exchanges matter. That is why dialogue matters.
The Call
Peace is not passive.
Peace requires participation.
If humanity is going to move forward peacefully, then citizens themselves must help lead the way.
Not through perfection. Not through slogans. But through consistent, repeated, generous human engagement.
The world does not need fewer bridges between people. It needs millions more.
The research supports this. The institutions now affirm it. The network already proves it.
And despite everything we see around us today, we remain convinced of something important:
The world is still extraordinary.
People are still capable of kindness. Communities are still capable of courage. Young people are still capable of leadership. Cultures are still capable of learning from one another. Human beings are still capable of building peace together.
That belief is not naive.
After seventy years of people-to-people work across more than 160 countries, we know it to be true.
This Is Our Call to Action
Join us. Support a chapter. Start a conversation. Build a partnership. Create an exchange. Open a door. Share a meal. Welcome someone new. Listen deeply. Lead locally. Think globally.
Help build a better world — one friendship at a time.
Because the work of peace belongs to all of us.
And the world still needs people to people.
Follow PTPI and learn more:
🌐 PTPI Website 📰 PTPI on Substack 📘 PTPI Facebook Community 🔗 PTPI LinkedIn Group
Sources: UNHCR Global Trends 2024; UCDP Annual Report 2024; SIPRI Military Expenditure Database 2025; IEP Global Peace Index 2025; Eisenhower Presidential Library founding records; PTPI official history and chapter materials; Pettigrew & Tropp meta-analysis on intergroup contact; UNESCO Global Citizenship Education framework; Erasmus+ programme documentation; USIP Track 2 diplomacy resources; U.S. National Museum of American Diplomacy.