PTPI Blog

September 11 is a date that might bring to mind a number of recollections, whether they are world events or personal milestones.  For PTPI, September 11 is a day of celebration.

People to People International was founded on September 11, 1956 by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower.  In his book Waging Peace, Eisenhower wrote the following:

I had long advocated – and still advocate today – this kind of direct people-to-people exchange as one fine, progressive step toward peace in the world.  In September of 1956 I initiated a broad-scale People-to-People program – an effort to stimulate private citizens in many fields (the arts, education, athletics, law, medicine, business) to organize themselves to reach across the seas and national boundaries to their counterparts in other lands.

If we are going to take advantage of the assumption that all people want peace, then the problem is for people to get together and leap governments – if necessary to evade governments – to work out not one method but thousands of methods by which people can gradually learn a little bit more of each other.

-Waging Peace. Dwight D. Eisenhower. Doubleday, 1965. Pages 410-411.

As members of PTPI, we serve as ambassadors of our belief in people bringing about peace by working for understanding.   We inspire others around us to do the same.

PTPI Founder Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his granddaughter Mary Jean Eisenhower (current President and CEO of PTPI) a copy of Waging Peace as a Christmas gift. The inscription reads: "For: Mary Jean, with a Merry Christmas. Affectionately, Granddad."

Mandate for Change and Waging Peace are two volumes that comprise President Eisenhower's memoirs of his time as President of the United States. The inscription on this volume reads "To Mary Jean - with the abiding affection of her grandfather, Dwight Eisenhower, 1963."