Archive: Around Town

For the fourth year the Lansing Lions Club participated in the international "Peace Poster" competition.  Those winners competed in regional competitions, and the winners of the regionals competed in the international contest.   This year Lansing 6th grader Gregory Wasenko (he is entering 7th grade in September) won both the local and regional contests, coming in first among hundreds of entries.  "But I didn't want to do it for the winning," Gregory says.  "I wanted to do it for fun.  I draw for fun."


On August 8 Gregory was presented with a certificate and savings bond for his winning poster.  "That's quite an achievement," says Lansing Lion Noni Krom, who was one of the three judges.  " It is quite a competition.  In his school there were over a hundred posters presented."

The theme of this year's competition was "Peace Without Borders."  Posters were judged on originality, artistic merit and portrayal of the contest theme.  "He pulled it all in," says Krom, who noted that there were about 100 entries from Lansing and 300 - 400 entries in the region.

Lansing students drew their posters in the Quest program at school.  Krom says Quest teachers Amy Redmond and Bob Terry submitted them to the Lansing judges, and winners were selected.  The first prize is a certificate and a $100 savings bond.  Caitlin Wischermann's poster won second prize, a $75 savings bond.  Nicole Washburn and Aidan Quest tied in third place, each receiving a $50 savings bond.  The regional first prize is another $100 savings bond.


Gregory's poster depicts a dove, a few versions of the peace symbol, and ribbons of flags of different nations.  He says he was inspired by the contest theme.  "I want world peace," he says.  "In a world with no borders no one would fight for land, which means no war."  Gregory loves drawing, and hopes to move to Hollywood to draw cartoons some day.  He draws his own comic strip, so creating a poster was fun for him.  "I thought of a way to make the poster more interesting, by drawing a real dove that you find in nature," he says.

The Lions Club has 1.4 million members in more than 44,600 clubs in 192 countries.  350,000 original posters were submitted by children aged 11-13 to local clubs world wide.  The Lansing club has only participated for four years so far, and Krom says that last year Lansing had the most entries in the region.  She says that it is remarkable that a Lansing child made it to first place in the regional competition, where some of the competitors come from larger communities.

Krom was impressed by many of the entries.  "They're really so different," she says.  "This year I'm going to take them to the schools to show them what they have to compete against."  She says this year's contest is already under way, with a new theme, "Celebrate Peace."

Gregory says he doesn't know why his poster won, because he liked some of the other submissions.  He says he didn't realize it was an international competition when he entered, but he was interested because it gave him an opportunity to draw.  "I like art, and I do anything to do art," he says.  But Krom knows why Gregory's poster won.  "It represented the theme more than the others," she says.

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