As Peter Yarrow walked off stage on the night of December 18, there was a sense in the crowd that while his concert was over, a wave of enthusiasm in Ukraine was just beginning to form.

Yarrow, of the famed activist folk group Peter, Paul and Mary, was in Ukraine to promote his worldwide non-profit organization Operation Respect. On stage, he sang recognizable songs of social justice like “No Easy Walk to Freedom” and “If I had a Hammer,” written when the band was at the height of their success in the mid-1960’s.

The most important and moving moment of the night, however, came when Peter was joined on stage by his son and daughter, along with the Ukrainian folk star Maria Burmaka and a sextet of children from the Kiev Children’s Choir, to sing and share the message of Operation Respect. The group sang “Don’t Laugh At Me,” a song Peter has adopted as the anthem of his organization, which compellingly drives home Operation Respect’s message of acceptance, regardless of a person’s skin color, disability, or social standing.

The concert was an exclamation mark on the end of a wildly successful introduction of Operation Respect into Ukraine. Throughout the week, a group of twenty-four individuals, comprised of Peace Corps volunteers, Ukrainian teachers, YMCA-Ukraine representatives, and members of the Ukrainian non-profit organization Alternative V, were trained how to teach the Operation Respect message in schools and in youth-oriented organizations around Ukraine.

Mark Weiss, the enthusiastic and animated education director for Operation Respect, facilitated an engaging, interactive, and evocative training for American and Ukrainian attendees.

When Mr. Yarrow founded his organization in September 2000, hoping to spread a message of respect and compassion among young people, he tapped Weiss to lead the worldwide trainings. Since its inception, Operation Respect has been taught in thousands of schools across America, and the program has been introduced into countries like Israel, Croatia and South Africa. Ukraine is now on this list.

The effort to bring Operation Respect to Ukraine was spearheaded by Peace Corps Volunteer Bob Schlehuber, and the success of the entire week was a product of months of intense networking and organizing. Schlehuber grabbed hold of this project in June of 2010 and kept his eye on the ball. The week of training and the successful concert was, by all standards, an earth-shattering home run.

At one point in the concert, Mr. Yarrow invited Bob on stage, referring to Schlehuber as “one of his personal heroes.” For volunteers in the audience, seeing Schlehuber on stage was proof that faith in ideals and confidence in abilities can yield unimaginable rewards. Before Mr. Yarrow and the group started into the “Don’t Laugh At Me” finale, he asked Schlehuber to say a few words. Like any good volunteer, Bob invoked the Kennedy’s. “Some men,” said Schlehuber, “see things as they are and ask why. Few men dream things that never were and ask, why not?” The idea, Bob explained, is that every person who was at the concert that night is a person asking, “Why not?”.

The passion and emotion emanating from Schlehuber and others on stage was contagious. The fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, brothers, and sisters at Mr. Yarrow’s concert left the Ukrainian House on Khreshatik Street that night with renewed faith in the idea that music can rise above race, religion, abilities, preferences, and hatred, but it can not be done alone. For the music of Operation Respect to cut through the prejudice young people deal with every day, it’s up to the parents, teachers, and role models to create a safe, caring, and healthy environment to empower not just their children, but children around the world.