Lisa's thoughts on the initiative: “In March, I participated as a speaker in the “Peace Tech Forum: Could peace technology help Ukraine?” organized in Helsinki by Peace Invaders, Aalto Entrepreneurship Society and Wicked Helsinki. I think the participants found it very meaningful then, and many ideas and collaborations came out of that experience for me – including co-organizing a peace technology hackathon challenge and developing Color Up Peace virtual workshops to support Ukrainians. Of course, I felt it was important to activate Tampere tech/entrepreneurial communities and those supporting the cause to try to make an impact together: by developing Finnish-Ukrainian relationships and partnerships between the Ukrainians who are now in Tampere and those who would like to help rebuild Ukraine and its peace. I hope ideas flourish at our event and many follow-up events happen!”.

Lisa Glybchenko.

About Color Up Peace:

Color Up Peace is a peacebuilding startup that works at the intersection of art-making and technology to leverage artistic innovation as a peacebuilding tool. Color Up Peace was founded by Lisa Glybchenko in 2016 as her response to external aggression against her home country Ukraine. From a student initiative at the American University in Bulgaria, Color Up Peace has grown to have projects/programs in Ukraine, Israel-Palestine and Kenya, as well as a special support program for Ukrainians who relocated to Finland during russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The idea behind Color Up Peace is to encourage participants to think about peace and what peace means to them; to create opportunities for sharing visions of peace through artistic and digital means; to foster dialogue through collective art-making; to challenge the abundance of violence-centered visuals in the media and popular culture; and to employ digital visual art-making as a peacebuilding tool. Color Up Peace invites people from all over the world to submit photos of what peace is to them which Lisa turns into coloring pages (by drawing each one by hand digitally) for others to engage with and transform the original vision of peace. This digital-artistic transformation is at the core of such Color Up Peace activities as international trainings, context-specific workshops, virtual exhibitions, 8 coloring books, and a newly developed virtual workshop series to support people affected by war – especially Ukrainians.

Want to join the workshop? There are multiple ways to take part: you can represent your company and share your expertise, come to learn new things and get to know new people or take part as a team member, whether you are a student or just somebody who wants to create change. We also hope to create connections between Ukrainians living in Tampere and companies and people in the area.

Read more and register for the event by Saturday 24th of September. Event information here.