At the Peace Dialogue Forum of the "World Peace Culture and Arts Festival 2025 · Venice," a historic moment was born! Nobel Peace Prize laureate and peace activist Leymah Gbowee was solemnly honored with the "WuYue World Peace Culture Award." Her vision and actions are precisely the light our era needs.
Her acceptance speech is as follows:
Today, standing here with Master WuYue, I say thank you. Because this orchestra embodies our hopes for the world. It comes from other countries yet can blend music from Italy to Spain, bringing joy and spreading peace wherever it goes. This is what our world needs. Our world needs spaces for us to come together, set aside differences, and advance peace.
Ladies and gentlemen, tonight you are enjoying beautiful music, but I must say it cannot end here. Each of us has a responsibility to go out and make our world a better place. Perhaps by offering someone a smile; perhaps by helping a mother pushing a stroller up the stairs; perhaps by serving warm meals to the elderly at train stations or hospitals. Or, by answering the call this world makes to all of us: to bring goodwill, compassion, and empathy back into our world. Only then can we truly make our world better.
If you have a phone, I’d like to ask you to do one thing before I leave: please turn on your light. For those who have already turned on their lights, and for those still trying to get their phones out, please look around. A minute ago, the back of this theater was dark; now, all our lights are shining. We can have light.
What I want to tell you is that each of you has a phone light, just as you have light within you. In this dark world, all you need to do is turn it on. So, all the evil, war, division, racism, and everything we suffer in this world—it can all end. You have light, I have light, Master WuYue has light.
May we shine the light within our hearts and make our world a better place.
Thank you all, and thank you, Master WuYue.
At the forum, two peace envoys—one from the realm of action and the other from the realm of spiritual art—seemed to meet under the starlight of humanity’s shared aspirations: one illuminates the path of humanity in the shadows of war with courage, while the other resonates with the cosmic harmony that heals divisions through Zen-inspired artistry. Though their paths differ, they share the same fervent and profound hope: may every melody become a seed of dialogue, and may every act of listening awaken respect for life. Peace has never been merely an idea—it is the practice and creation that transcends mountains and rivers, weaving together the East and the West.