We donate a portion of our sales to Play For Peace, a Chicago-based non-profit organization who's mission is to bring together children, youth and organizations from communities in conflict, using cooperative play to create laughter, compassion and peace.

Shasta Visions has a wonderful relationship with Play For Peace, donating to their incredible mission, while they use our Earth Marbles around the World to help teach Peace!

Play for Peace is a global organization, now in its 10th year. As part of their community development initiatives, they use play to promote relationships among people whose communities suffer from a history of cross-cultural tensions. Play is one of the primary ways that human beings learn. Play for Peace seeks to prevent violence in conflict-torn areas by teaching people to live together, play together, and work together. They work locally through community leaders and youth facilitators to teach children, teens, and adults to trust and respect others, and to break down generations of cultural barriers.

Global Reach, Local Action
Play for Peace operates in many regions around the world through their Hub Organizations. Each Hub Organization works to change their local communities by developing local leadership. Their strength comes from dedication to local initiatives and peaceful cooperation.

The Power Of Play
Why is play so important? Can play really be a path to peace — a long-term solution to the intractable patterns of violence?

Relationships
In a pure state of play, defenses crumble and people are no longer conscious of the self. When we laugh, fear melts away. The atmosphere of play enables people to connect directly, unfettered by prevailing prejudices.

Attitudes change and people connect as they open their hearts to new friendships once considered impossible. Rather than looking backward to clashes and heartache, people look forward in a spirit of collaboration and conciliation. Former enemies come together to create a place to live in peace side-by-side.

The Biology of Play
Human beings remember emotion-laden events far better than neutral experiences, which is one reason why moments of joy or despair can leave profound, ineradicable impressions.

The buoyant emotional charge of play, according to some neuroscientists, can spark chemical processes that help the formation of strong memories. Positive encounters of any kind will encourage the growth of new pathways in the brain's networks.

And positive encounters with people considered different — people whom children might normally be taught to fear, taunt, or hate — will lead to long-term, positive hard-wiring of the brain’s limbic system, the seat of the emotions.

Play and highly-charged, energetic positive interactions will form the foundation for a new mindset.