Source: phillyburbs.com

Sylvia Baldwin will carry the stories with her.

The New Hope-Solebury High School teen was one of five area students who sat enraptured and inspired, as Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, shared tales from his life as an advocate for peace and nonviolence Saturday at a private breakfast at Cross Culture Indian restaurant in Doylestown. The breakfast was sponsored by the Peace Center in Langhorne, where the 79-year-old social activist is an honorary member, and was one of three events he attended this weekend.

As the students plied him with questions on topics as varied as education, bullying, war and the importance of family, Gandhi shared stories from the years he spent living with his grandfather, from age 12 to 14. In one, he threw away the still-usable butt of a pencil on his way home from school, thinking the elder Gandhi would simply supply a new one. Instead, he was told to find the pencil he’d discarded. The lesson? Even a simple pencil uses the world’s natural resources and to waste one, as he had, was an act of violence against nature. It also was an act of violence against humanity, depriving those living in poverty of access to such resources due to over consumption. [Read more…]