Lessons in living: Kim Phuc
On June 8, 1972, nine-year-old Kim Phuc had 65% of her body burned with napalm in the South Vietnamese city of Trang Bang, a terror captured in one of photojournalism's most arresting images. Remarkably, she went on to forgive those responsible for her injuries. Since 1997 she's been a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador and is the founder of the Kim Phuc Foundation. An excerpt from her inspiring interview with UNESCO Press:

I want my experience to serve a purpose: I was burned because of war. Today, I want to encourage people to love and help one another. We need to learn how to become more tolerant, how to look at the individual, to listen, to come out of ourselves, to help others instead of letting ourselves get carried away by anger and hatred, which give rise to revenge and violence in the world and don't help anybody.

War causes nothing but suffering. That's why I show the little girl in the picture. Because she tells my story and the consequences that war has had on my life. No father or mother in the world wants what happened in that picture to happen again. I would like to transmit what I have learned to value: I experienced war; I know the value of peace.

I have lived with my pain; I know the value of love when you want to heal. I have lived with hatred, and now I know the power of forgiveness. Today, I am alive, I live without hatred, without the spirit of revenge, and I can tell all those who caused my suffering: I forgive you. That is the only way to save peace, to speak of tolerance and non-violence.

(Thanks to Ann at Sivacracy.)


And: The American War, 30 Years Later.