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Our story.

Svet began in December 2023 with two students at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico: one who grew up between Minsk and Kyiv, and one from Russia. Their countries were at war with each other, and they sat in the same seminar room.

In summer 2024, a $10,000 Projects for Peace grant paid for our first course. Teenagers from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus read through shared classical literature of the region together while the war was already underway, and spoke across a divide the world had come to see as absolute.

We ran two more courses for students from our home region and then brought the work to teen centers in New Mexico and a classroom in New York. Both of us are graduates of St. John’s College, and Amir is also a graduate of the UWC international school in Armenia. St. John’s gave us the method and UWC the vision, and in 2026 UWC endorsed us as an official short course partner. We now combine local and global work: in New Mexico and broader US in-person and with international students online.

amir kA laptop on a table showing a video call with several participants

Why “Svet”

He saw above him the high, eternal sky, unclear yet infinitely deep and alive with light [svet].

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, Book III, Ch. 16

Svet comes from a stem shared by Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian. It means both light and world. Tolstoy’s vision reminds us that true peace begins in the human heart. We chose it because our courses aim to kindle that same light in young people.

The problem we are working on.

  • Conflict starts before the war does.

    Wars like those in Ukraine and Gaza grow out of an everyday breakdown of trust, attention and dialogue. Old grievances go unspoken until they harden.

  • Education has stopped teaching us to think together.

    Schools reward memorizing over the questioning and listening that it takes to understand someone on the other side.

  • Wisdom is not transmitted, it is created.

    It arises in dialogue: through reflection, disagreement, and the shared search for meaning.

At the core is peace

For us, peace is not the mere absence of war; it is the presence of understanding.

Mission and vision.

  • Our mission

    To counter the roots of violence, caused in part by a crisis of attention among the next generation, we run guided, dialogue-based courses in classical literature that help teens learn to listen, think, and speak in ways that create connection.

  • Our vision

    Svet Peace Project envisions a world where young people recover depth of thought, compassion, and mutual understanding, and build communities where peace is practiced daily through dialogue, reflection, and the courage to engage one another with honesty and care.

How it works.

We focus on classical texts, paintings, and films that have survived because they ask questions that do not go away.

one shared work
ten people, nobody at the front

  1. Read ahead

    A few days before, everyone gets a short work: a story, a film, or a painting. Each person comes to the seminar with one observation and one question.

  2. Start from one question

    Everyone shares their opening questions, and the seminar leader concludes with their own.

  3. Talk to each other, not to the leader

    Students answer one another and point back to the work to support what they say. The leader slows the conversation down, emphasizes important moments, and makes sure every voice is heard.

  4. Suspending judgement

    The aim is to understand the work better than anyone could alone instead of dismissing or agreeing with it prematurely.

  5. Take it home

    After the last session, each student turns one line or question from the work into a project in their own community.

    See what students built

What we study.

Texts, films, music and art, chosen anew for each course.