It's Our World Too collection

"IOWT [It's Our World Too] is a 'kids' grassroots organization founded in 1982. We try to help promote peace through exchanges of ideas and concerns." (Spring 1986 newsletter) Later their mission expanded to issues of hunger/homelessness, the environment, human rights, violence, and drugs.

The organization came about in March 1982 when 11-year-old Paul Gravelle, of Winterport, Maine, was with his mother, Denise, at a peace event outside their church where signatures were being asked for, for a nuclear freeze petition. Paul wanted to sign a petition and was told that he was too young. He decided to start his own petition for kids to sign. As he told his mother, "It's our world too!" Soon some friends joined in. His group of friends included Peter, Jenny Rock, Meadow Davis, Jennifer Giles, Katie O'Neil, Tamra/Tammey Montgomery, Douglas Dunbar, Lynne, Tara Shorey, Janet Crooker, Peter Nelson, Julie Evans, Ellen Fortini, and Colin King. Eventually they met Sunday afternoons at the Methodist Church in Winterport. Kasey Cox, in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, started an IOWT chapter in Pennsylvania.

Initially, the organization sought signatures from kids ages 5-18 on a petition to present to world leaders. The goal was to have the 10,000 signatures before the Reagan/Gorbachev summit in Washington in October 1986. They ended up with 24,000 signatures from kids in all 50 states, and in 12 nations, which were delivered in 1990 to Senator George Mitchell's office, and from there it was to be forwarded to Washington D.C. They also sent out newsletters, appeared at various events, created cassette tapes of music written by Paul Gravelle and performed by the IOWT band ("The Unlimited"), and were on All Things Considered. This radio program, along with a small notice in Sassy magazine for teenagers, brought publicity to their cause.

By around 1991, Paul Gravelle was 20, and a music education major at the University of Maine. The organization was moved to Wellsboro, Penn., at the Wellsboro High School, which Kasey Cox had attended.

The letters in this collection are mostly from children (primarily girls), ranging from just a scrap of paper asking for a petition or newsletter to longer letters containing information about their lives. There are also letters from adults -- in politics, schools, churches, and other peace organizations.