Up With People: Stand For Peace

Up with People (UWP) cast members arrive in towns and cities around the world as strangers.

- Marge Pellegrino

They learn and serve together with the community. At the end of the week, the international cast departs for their next destination knowing the host families and the kids for whom they performed a little better. Many who’ve sat in the audience of UWP performances report they are inspired to be more positive and serve their communities.

J. Blanton Belk started UWP in 1965 because he believed that it was young people who could best build bridges of understanding during that time of unrest.

Beyah Rasool agrees that UWP is just as powerful a tool today. When he was a cast member, he saw how participating in community action projects connected cast members with families that hosted them. Beyah witnessed how the lyrics of the songs they sang about hope, optimism, and understanding energized the audience. He felt how the workshops they conducted helped the kids they worked with to overcome bullying. He saw how planting trees in a community also builds confidence. Each serves as a step toward a more peaceful world—one audience and one person at a time.

Beyah’s first step toward UWP was to apply. He grew up in Tucson, Arizona. He heard about UWP from Bill Holmes, who had traveled with UWP in the 1970s. The program sounded great, but Beyah hesitated. “It took a year to finally join. I never thought somebody from my upbringing could do it.”