Nuclear Weapon Free - My Cup of Tea

By Ursula Völker

Please click on the photo to the right for more photos of this event!

A small table, cookies, tea bags, some thermos flasks of hot water and a lot of information materials on Nuclear Weapons, these are the basic ingredients of "Nuclear Weapon Free - My Cup of Tea", a new project seeking to raise public awareness concerning nuclear disarmament.

Wearing their white coats, the medical students from Sweden, Germany and Switzerland arranged this event in cooperation with Ban All Nukes Generation (BANg), a youth disarmament network in Europe.

Around 30 students from IPPNW and BANg addressed passers-by in downtown Geneva, inviting them to have a cup of tea from nuclear weapon free countries served with delicious Swiss cookies, and talk about the urgent need to abolish nuclear weapons all over the world. Prevention is the only effective cure against a nuclear war, that’s the crucial message the students wanted to spread, and their efforts met with success. Even the busy travellers heading towards the station nearby took a break and listened attentively to what the young activists had to say.

By the end of the afternoon, we had distributed 300 Cup of Tea-flyers, bunches of ICAN folders and post cards. The BANg:s handed out sunflower seeds and caught the attention of people passing by with colourful banners and acrobatic tricks. Even the local metro newspaper ‘Le Matin Bleu’ wrote an article on this event.

Many of the people we talked to asked how they can play an active role in the campaign to abolish nuclear weapons, and this is exactly the most important advantage of the new project: It does not overemphasize the frightening facts which often deter people from getting involved, but strengthens their feeling of self-efficacy and hope. Next time they’ll meet friends or relatives for a cup of tea, they can raise the topic and contribute to a stronger grassroots movement towards a nuclear-free future.