Brilliant Ideas: Roots of Peace

Charmian Love

May 11, 2010

I recently had the great pleasure of meeting the Founder of Roots of Peace, Heidi Kuhn – a dynamic social entrepreneur.

Roots of Peace is a brilliant organisation – incubated in the heart of the Napa Valley wine country.   The mission is to ‘work to unearth dangerous landmines in war-torn countries and empower the local communities scarred by these inhumane weapons. Roots of Peace works to build sustainable crops on land once too dangerous to traverse is how we transform the scars of conflict into the roots of peace.

The organization has grown over the last few years – from a start up of $247,000 in 2003 to an annual budget in 2010 of $11.8 million.  They have also won accolades from a range of well respected international bodies including The Skoll Foundation, and Ban Ki-Moon, the secretary general of the United Nations.

True to its Napa Valley roots, I especially like the Mines to Vines project in Afghanistan which focuses on removing landmines from planting vineyards in the newly cleared soil. With the help of The  University of California at Davis, Roots of Peace began educating farmers in pruning and trellising grapes, and imported American-made processing equipment to streamline local harvesting.  Think about that next time you take a sip of your favourite Chardonnay.

The other, newer, project that caught my eye was the Mines to Chocolate project that Roots of Peace is starting up in Vietnam.   Though they are still waiting for their NGO statement, there is something powerful about their statement ‘If everything is accomplished as planned, all deadly landmines remaining on the territory of Vietnam will gradually be converted into chocolate bars with the flavor of peaceful life, humanity, sympathy and sharing from the friends in the other side of the globe’.