• Receives cash prize and certificate from Lions Clubs International

Thirteen-year-old Nethuka Hasarel Perera was among the merit award winners of the 2023-2024 Peace Poster Contest organised by Lions Clubs International (LCI). For over three decades, Lions Clubs around the globe have been sponsoring the competition in schools and youth groups. LCI stated that creating peace posters gives children everywhere the chance to express their visions of peace and inspire the world through art and creativity.

The Peace Poster Contest team of Lions Clubs International District 306 B2 recently held a press briefing where Perera was handed over a cash prize of $ 500 as well as a certificate of merit. According to a statement issued by Lions Clubs International District 306 B2, Perera is the first Sri Lankan to win the merit prize at the contest.

Approximately 600,000 children from 60 countries took part in the 2023-2024 Peace Poster Contest, with judging at club, district, and multiple district levels narrowing it down to 115 submissions. ‘Dare to Dream’ by Perera, sponsored by Maradagahamula Divulapitiya Second Century Lions Club, was among the 23 merit award winners.

Addressing the media, Perera first thanked the teachers, staff, and principal of De Mazenod College, Kandana, where he currently schools, as well as everyone else who has helped him get to where he is today. He also thanked LCI and the organisers of the Peace Poster Contest.

Perera extended his gratitude to Chamara Edisooriya, his art tutor, Dhammika Perera, who encouraged him to work with acrylics and develop his style, and Pasindu Geeth Nimantha and Kauminda Sampath of the Pansilu Bhawan Arts Centre, Kandana.

“I want to thank all the teachers who have taught me so far and every friend who has uttered even a single word of encouragement,” Perera said.

He then gave those in attendance a look at the intricacies of his artwork. ‘Dare to Dream’ features a dove, a symbol of peace, with a heart-shaped peace sign in its beak. Extending from the dove’s tail tip is a string of flags of different countries, in no particular order.

“More than showing my wish for the future of Sri Lanka or the world, I felt like depicting how peace can be generated and how this can be made a reality,” Perera said, adding that he used the canvas to depict his dream. In ‘Dare to Dream’, the dove, by going around the world, will create unity.

He went on to say that the artwork also depicts certain hidden dreams he has. Five years ago, when Perera was in Grade 4, he read an article about the end of the world in a children’s magazine. “I cried a lot. It mentioned a year the world would end and this scared me. I was very vocal about my feelings, and back then, it was said the world will be destroyed by an asteroid. So I thought I will destroy asteroids or go to a planet that is safer to live on. I had many such thoughts. In my artwork, the dove isn’t flying towards Earth, but towards the sky or the Sun, showing that to save all of humankind from the end of the world, it was leaving this planet and going to another.”

Perera continued to explain his work saying the random arrangement of buildings, statues, forests, coastal areas, and urban and rural areas made it difficult to label the landmass as any particular country. “Everything is disorganised in this work. I wanted to say that in order to stop crime, pollution, corruption and so on, the world needs to stop dividing itself into separate countries, and instead be one big nation.”

“The world is going forward as one nation, with all people together,” he explained. Perera went on to say that the dove was flying from right to left, darkness to light, in the painting.