Urdd Peace and Goodwill Message
The Urdd Peace and Goodwill Message has been relayed each year without fail since 28 June 1922. It is a message of peace and goodwill from the young people of Wales that is sent to the children and young people of the world on Goodwill Day, which is May 18. The message theme, authorship and broadcast is organised by Urdd Gobaith Cymru (lit. "Wales's League of Hope", commonly translated to the Welsh League of Youth) which is a Welsh language youth organisation also established in 1922. The message is developed as a response to  current events, and over the years numerous responses have been received from other countries. The process of writing and sending the message on behalf of the young people of Wales to young people around the world aims to inspire humanitarian and international activity. In 1955 Urdd Gobaith Cymru assumed responsibility for ensuring the message is written and distributed every year. In 2019 the message was launched outside of Wales for the first time, taking young people from Wales on a visit to an academy working with young people from disadvantaged backgrounds in London – the Eastside Young Leaders Academy. In 2020  the message theme was changed from Empowering Girls to Stop the Clock and Start Again "2020 theme change: in order to properly reflect the feelings of the young people of Wales, the Message theme this year has been changed as they try and make sense of the world during the COVID-19 pandemic. It will be a letter to the world, and especially to leaders, calling on us not to return to the old destructive ways of living". The message is written by young people for young people. History. The idea of sending a “Message of Goodwill” was first suggested by  the Rev. Gwilym Davies MA at the 'Adolescent Conference of the Welsh School of Social Service' which was held in Llandrindod Wells at Whitsun 1922. Davies was an Honorary Director of the League of Nations in Wales and he suggested that the message should be created by school pupils “in all 13 counties of Wales and Monmouthshire” (there was ambiguity at the time whether Monmouthshire was a constitutional part of Wales), it is said that “the suggestions was adopted with enthusiasm”. The work of receiving suggestions from schools began and Davies was to organise the broadcast. The Peace and Goodwill  Message is shared on 18 May, the date of the first peace conference at the Hague in 1899. The first Peace and Goodwill Message was sent in Morse Code via the Post Office on June 28, 1922 by the Rev Gwilym Davies, Cwm Rhymni (Rhymney Valley) It has been sent without fail since that date. In 1922, the director of the radio station on the Eiffel Tower in Paris responded by sending it on from the Eiffel Tower in Morse Code. In 1924, a response was received from the Archbishop of Uppsala in Sweden and also from the education minister  in Poland. The message was broadcast on the BBC World Service for the first time in 1924, and it is now translated into over 40 languages and is distributed via the web. Early responses. The first responses to the Goodwill Message were received in 1924, including one from the Archbishop of Uppsala in Sweden, Poland’s Education Minister, Millaszewski [sic.]. A request was made once again in 1925 for responses to the message to be sent to the Rev. D.M.Davies at the offices of the League of Nations in Wales, 10 Richmond Terr, Park Place, Cardiff. Responses were received from , amongst others Léon Bourgeois (a French leader and a left-leaning thinker), Paul Hymans (a Belgian liberal politician and the second General Secretary for the League of Nations) and Sir Eric Drummond, General Secretary for the Union of Nations and the Education Ministers in Czechoslovakia and Finland. Perhaps unexpectedly a response was also received from “Signior Mussolini”, the fascist leader of Italy. In 1925 the first response was received from the USA to the message, which came from Public School 6, Manhattan, New York and an article about the initiative was printed in the December 1925 edition of the children ’s American magazine, Everyland. 736 responses to the Peace and Goodwill Message in 1938. 124 came from the United States, and 304 from Romania. The responsibility for publishing the annual message was transferred to Urdd Gobaith Cymru in the 1950s. Today it is written each year by members of the Urdd’s Bwrdd Syr IfanC and Cymraeg Bob Dydd. International messages. No response was received to the first message in 1922, despite the Eiffel Tower radio station director sending it on. Within ten years 68 countries had responded to the message. These are records of the concerns of young people  in Wales, and a comprehensive collection of the responses are available in the National Library of Wales collection. Over the decades, posters have been produced alongside the message, which is on a different theme each year. The messages are usually translated into the Celtic languages, the main European languages and a number of other world languages, large and small, including Esperanto Part of the tradition of the messages is that children from countries around the world respond to the message from Wales, often in the form of letters and drawings. Today responses are received mostly via email or images and  videos which have been share on social media. The latest messages, including a video created for the first time in 2018, can be seen on the Urdd website. Education packs are created annually for teachers and pupils to use, along with posters featuring the messages in various languages. Here are some responses from abroad to the messages shared internationally in the past: Themes of the messages. The first message was sent in 1922 and, according to a copy of the leaflet in 1925 it seems like the same message was sent in 1923, 1924 and 1925. The Welsh used reads : “"Cenadwri Plant Cymru at Blant yr Holl Fyd trwy gyfrwng y Pellebr Diwifr.” (“Tywysogaeth Cymru a Mynwy”) ("“Tidings from Welsh Children to the Children of the whole world by Wireless Telegraph.” (“The Prncipality of Wales and Monmouthshire”). Themes: God’s Blessings, all countries and nations, end all the old arguments, the Treaty of the Union of Nations, a friend to all mothers. "Quote: “Yna ni bydd raid i neb ohonom, pan awn yn hŷn, ddangos ein cariad tuag" at wlad ein genedigaeth trwy gashau a lladd y naill y llall.” "(“So that none of us shall, as we get holder , be required to demonstrate our love towards our Country of birth through hate and killing each other.”)" Example of themes. Some annual messages have had an individual theme, some have been repeats. Some themes reflect the situation and political environment in Wales and the world at that time. For example: