The story of World Citizen began with a young naval officer, Lynn Elling. Lynn served on a Landing Ship Tank in the South Pacific during WWII. When he saw the carnage of the battle of Tarawa and, later, as he served in Korea, he knew there must be a better way. This young soldier made a commitment to cultivate a world without war.
Lynn settled in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he raised a family with his wife, Donna, and went on to become a successful businessman. Determined to find a way of encouraging young people to solve problems in a peaceful way, Lynn founded World Citizen in 1972. Inspired by a social worker in New Jersey, the idea was to dedicate schools as Peace Sites. By 1988 the first Minnesota Peace Site, Longfellow Elementary School in Minneapolis, had been dedicated. Since then, hundreds of sites across the globe have become dedicated Peace Sites. In amazing celebrations of communities coming together, each successive site developed their own commitment to peace and conflict resolution; plaques were hung, gardens planted, and peace action poles placed.
In 1996, inspired by the Peace Prize Forum (an event of the Norwegian Nobel Institute in collaboration with five Midwest Norwegian Lutheran Colleges), Lynn co-founded the Peace Prize Festival at Augsburg College in Minneapolis. For seventeen years, Nobel Laureates were studied and celebrated at the Festival by student peacemakers.
Lynn Elling passed away on February 14, 2016, at the age of 94. His legacy of peace lives on! In 2021, World Citizen became known as World Citizen Peace (WCP). In 2022, WCP established the Peace Ambassador initiative to expand the impact of the Five Peace Actions. In early 2026, World Citizen Peace dissolved as an organization and transitioned remaining assets to the new World Citizen Peace Ambassador Center, cared for by Julie Lillie of The Peace Pad.
For over five decades, World Citizen has been guided by a clear and powerful mission: To Empower People to Create a Just and Peaceful World. Through our Five Peace Actions and the dedication of our global community, we’ve created ripples of peace that continue to grow.
Together, we’ve achieved remarkable milestones:
We are proud of what we’ve built together! Thank you—to every supporter, donor, volunteer, and Peace Ambassador—for believing in this mission since 1972.