On April 19th, CMI’s celebratory 10th Anniversary Seminar took place in the Finnish National Theatre in Helsinki, Finland. Nearly 800 guests were in attendance, and more followed the event live through a webcast provided by MTV3.
Speakers at the 4-hour event included CMI’s founder President Martti Ahtisaari, President Tarja Halonen, Ambassador Swanee Hunt and Ambassador Afif Safieh. Emmanuel Jal shared the story of his journey from being a child soldier in Sudan to becoming a successful artist and activist. The entire audience stood up for his song “We Want Peace” – the perfect ending for the first half of the seminar. During the final half, Stephen Heintz from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Alexander Stubb, the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Finland, joined Swanee Hunt, Afif Safieh and Emmanuel Jal in a panel that discussed how to most effectively support the work for peace. Several questions were raised from angles as varied as the guests.
The keynote address was delivered by the former Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan. The seminar was moderated by Stephen Cole from Al Jazeera English.
In addition to the presentations by individual speakers, the seminar presented video and film work produced by documentary filmmaker John Webster, Franck Media, and the Nobel Committee. Sir Richard Branson sent a video greeting that was shared with the audience.
CMI warmly thanks all those who participated in the seminar and helped to make it a success. The group of people who attended the seminar was noteworthy, and CMI hopes to continue collaboration in the future. CMI thanks the speakers, each and every one of whom brought a unique perspective and offered valuable insights into work that is often times difficult to explain. Our special gratitude goes out to everybody who helped make the event possible: the partners who provided support – not least in the long hours of work put into planning the seminar with all its details. We also thank the belief invested in us by those who committed to becoming CMI’s supporters. You will find a list of everybody involved at www.everypeacematters.com
You can browse through some of the key points raised during the speeches and the panel discussion by visiting our Twitter stream: http://twitter.com/#!/cmioffice/
For video of the event, please follow this link: http://www.mtv3.fi/cmi/
For information on CMI and the seminar:
