Join us for the second Student Peace Alliance National Conference this coming February in Texas! Come together with 500 youth from across the country to move past the politics of left and right and towards a focus on what is practical and effective.

Early Bird Registration (now extended until January 20th): $45

Registration after January 20th: $55

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Student Peace Alliance is a national youth movement mobilizing our generation to create and sustain peace. Working with Student Peace Alliance, youth throughout the country engage communities and policy makers in building sustainable peace. We take a two-pronged approach that utilizes both federally focused advocacy efforts and applied peacebuilding in local communities. We advocate for evidence-based legislation and policy that will enhance our capacity to reduce violence and build sustainable peace both domestically and internationally. Our applied peacebuilding efforts engage youth in the day-to-day work of understanding and preventing violence in our homes, communities and institutions.

Our conference will focus on both aspects of our work. For our legislative initiatives we will be focusing on the Youth PROMISE Act (HR 1064/S 435). We will also discuss the need for a government infrastructure that makes peace a priority, such as the Department of Peace (as currently proposed by HR 808). The agenda of this conference is mainly issue-based to support understanding of peacebuilding work at an international and domestic level. We have chosen to focus on education and training to build a strong constituency of youth peacebuilders.

The 2010 Conference will be our second national conference. At our first conference in 2007 we were grateful to have your fellow Nobel Peace Laureate Betty Williams as well as Arun Gandhi share their stories and wisdom with us. This year we expect to host over 500 youth from around the country, educating them about effective domestic and international peacebuilding programs; providing grassroots organizing, applied peacebuilding, and lobbying training; and empowering them to be citizen advocates for an infrastructure in the federal government that makes peace a priority. We expect this to be a dynamic conference that will change the central discourse on peace within our country.

We come together out of a shared understanding that peace is not a utopian ideal; it is an issue critical to our national and human security. Either we continue reactively addressing ever-increasing levels of violence and the consequent human and economic costs, or we take a fresh approach. This isn’t about the politics of left or right; it is about what is practical and effective.

Those attendees under the age of 18 must be accompanied by a chaperone older than 25 years of age. The ratio for chaperones to youth must be 8:1 in larger groups. Chaperones should register in the Under 18 category and may also register their youth attendees. If this requirement creates a difficult burden, please contact spa.pr@thepeacealliance.org to work out possible solutions.

Below is the summary of Conference attendee costs, minus transportation to the Georgetown/Austin area. For information on travel options go here.

The hotel provides a free continental breakfast and we will be providing food on Sunday for attendees. The meal ticket price listed below is the total cost for Friday dinner, Saturday lunch and Saturday dinner. Meals will be at the Southwestern University cafeteria which has delicious food (no, really) and great options for vegetarians and vegans. We strongly recommend purchasing meal tickets during the registration process as we have a discounted price and you will pay more if you wait to purchase them at the Southwestern cafeteria.