From March 27th to April 5th, 2015 a group of student ambassadors from metropolitan New York City met with students in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan for a ten-day International Youth Leadership Workshop.

The focus of the workshop was to create and expand awareness of the dangers of nuclear weapons; teach empathy, compassion and communication skills to youth from different cultures; and give the participants a chance to express their newfound connection and understanding through art.

Possessing a genuine desire to make exciting new connections with peers from foreign countries, the students engaged in an intensive workshop organized by top professionals in education, peace mediation and art, as well as lectures from a few of the last remaining survivors of the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

The students and faculty made the most of a once in a lifetime opportunity. But don’t take our word for it. View the above slideshow to see what last year’s participants had to say about the 2015 IYLW.