In ROTARY District 5100, which encompasses northern Oregon and southern Washington, there are over 500 Peace Poles!

April 24, 2024

“In District 5100, which encompasses northern Oregon and southern Washington, we have over 500 Peace Poles.”

– Larry Strober, director of the local Rotary Peace Pole program

Perhaps you’ve seen them? Bright white four-sided wood boards, about five feet high, with messages of peace in English and other languages adorning each side?

They are called Peace Poles and their numbers are growing around the world due to the efforts of local Rotary clubs and other organizations.

In fact, in Yamhill County alone it’s believed that the number of Peace Poles sited has hit the century mark. “Give or take one or two,” said Larry Strober, director of the local Rotary Peace Pole program, begun in 2016.

“We have 100 Peace Poles in Yamhill County in Newberg, McMinnville, Lafayette, Dayton (as well as in) St. Paul,” Strober said. “In District 5100, which encompasses northern Oregon and southern Washington, we have over 500 Peace Poles.”

Three Rotary clubs in Newberg, Sherwood and McMinnville are responsible for the local effort to erect the Peace Poles with a simple goal: “Creating a future vision and focus on creating peace in the world, starting with the children of the world,” Strober said.

The local effort is part of a larger plan to erect the poles at sites viewable via a map at www.RotaryPeacePoles.World or by scanning the QR code printed on the bottom of each Peace Pole. The Peace Poles are manufactured https://worldpeace.org by May Peace Prevail on Earth International, a firm based in Wassaic, New York.

The latest Peace Pole to be installed in Newberg occurred April 24 at Portland Community College’s Newberg campus. It comes 79 years after the first Peace Pole was established in 1955 in Hiroshima, Japan. Now there are an estimated 200,000 Peace Poles erected around the world.

Rotarian Mike Caruso explained at the PCC dedication how the local club came to get involved in the effort to site Peace Poles, which involved a plea from Portland Rotarians in 2016.

“They were looking for ways to help the community and one of the members from the Rotary Club in Lake Oswego mentioned that they had put Peace Poles in all of the middle schools in Lake Oswego,” Caruso said. “And then the Portland police chief was in the meeting and said ‘I’d like to have a peace pole at each of our eight precincts.’”

The effort really started to snowball locally after that. The local Rotary clubs approached the board of the Chehalem Park and Recreation District and they agreed to host 10 Peace Poles, the Newberg school board accepted Peace Poles at every school in the district, then the city of Newberg agreed to have them erected at their facilities throughout town.

“So, we ended up planting 57 Peace Poles back in 2017,” Caruso said.

Not to be outdone, North Valley Friends Church has erected 16 Peace Poles on a walking path around its North College Street campus.