Hi, I'm Dave Ice, founder of StoryCorps.

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For nearly half a century, people have been gathering in Charlottesville, Virginia to try to achieve

something that is so audacious it doesn't even seem possible. We're talking about

world peace. And these people have actually been pretty successful.

A fact made all the more remarkable since they're in the fourth grade.

Sometimes world peace game feels like the weight of the world on your shoulders.

This is exploding over here, this is firing over there, this is spilling oil, and I just look at the board, and I say to myself,

oh my gosh, I need to fix this.

Okay, so we are talking about a game here. It's called the World Peace Game.

Students are divided into made up countries, and they're each given a specific role, like

Prime Minister, Secretary of the United Nations.

And then they're presented with a series of very real global problems, and they have to try and solve them.

Our country is just getting hit and hit and we're the weakest country and we're being attacked by the second strongest country.

Oh my gosh, how are we going to deal with this?

There were tsunamis subzero cold snaps and the sandstorm and it seemed like each country

was bothering us on a different level.

You go to the problem and then there's a problem inside the problem and you try to solve that problem

but then that brings you back to the main problem.

...