Grandmother Love Barack Obama told us about his Grandmother, now let's tell him about ours! Join Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts and people from throughout the country and share a story about your Grandmother with President Obama and the First Family.

Express your Grandmother Love

Have you seen the bust of Barack Obama and his Grandmother at the Peace Abbey? The bronze statue by Georgian sculptor Lado Goudjabidze poignantly brings to life the strong bond of love that bound these two together. During his campaign Obama told us about his relationship with Grandmother, the love he felt for her and how she influenced him as he grew to be the outstanding man he is today. Now, through the new program Grandmother Love, we Americans have the opportunity to tell Obama and his family about our Grandmothers.

Everyone has a Grandmother story. Whether you see your Grandmother every day, once a week, on holidays only, or if she is deceased or you have never met her - you have a story to tell.

Project Grandmother Love invites you to tell your story by means of an essay, a letter, a poem or even a drawing. Stories will be collected countrywide from people of all ages - from children who are just learning to print to elders whose handwriting may wobble a bit. All stories will be bound into a large book entitled Grandmother Love. The book and bust of Obama and his Grandmother will be presented to the Obama family as a gift from the American people.

Join the project! Write your Grandmother story in your own handwriting on an 8 1/2 X 11 sheet of paper. Also be sure to provide a typed copy as well.

Host the Gandhi Statue A full-size replica of the Peace Abbey's statue of Mohandas Gandhi is available for loan to your school, place of worship, or other organization. The Peace Abbey is in the process of scheduling exhibit dates. Time frames can be arranged to benefit a maximum number of visitors.

Contact us at  508-655-2143  508-655-2143 or email us for more information.

Cost: Transporting the statue and materials in Boston area is $250.
Out of state: $600 Northeast

Samantha Smith Project
The Peace Literature Project in Honor of Samantha Smith

The Peace Abbey proposes the development of The Peace Literature Project in Honor of Samantha Smith to educate students about peace and promote peace literature for school-age children in 50 selected pilot schools across the United States.

The project honors Samantha Smith, a young American girl who asked a simple question and changed the attitudes of two great nations.

In the 1980s, the United States and the Soviet Union were still in the grip of a Cold War – a struggle between Western democracy and communism as systems of government. Each country threatened the other with destruction by nuclear weapons, and kept making more and more of them. Ten-year-old Samantha Smith worried about war and dreamed of peace. So she wrote a letter to Yuri Andropov, the new leader of the Soviet Union: “Dear Mr. Andropov,” she wrote, “I have been worrying about Russia and the United States getting into a nuclear war. Are you going to have a war or not…?”