Can a Children’s Book Bring World Peace?

Our Be Area Innovator today is Tess Cacciatore, award-winning filmmaker, author and founder of the Global Women's Empowerment Network. From tackling issues like homelessness, human trafficking and domestic violence, to creating children's books and films that champion compassion and peace, Tess has built a career around one mission, transforming lives through the power of storytelling. In this episode, she shares the inspiration behind Yumi's Universe, the story of kids celebrating peace, her creative journey as well as her work to combat human and sex trafficking. This is Be Area Innovators and I'm your host, Steve Yusfas. Tess, welcome to our program. Thank you so much. Glad to have you here. So you're the author behind Yumi's Universe, Garden of Peace. And it's a beautiful story, a beautiful animation. I saw it, I was pleasantly surprised of the beauty of it. And it's a celebration of peace through a tea ceremony. And I would like to ask you to tell us more about the story, how it came about and kind of how you ended up creating a movie and a book for that matter. Yes, Steve. So it started off with a very sad story with a personal friend of mine in my life. He was diagnosed last year with stage three lymphoma and it got worse and he disappeared for the summer. And on August 16th, he posted that a woman, a friend of his came in a full Japanese kimono serving a Japanese formal tea ceremony for friendship. So she did a whole ceremony for him in his hospital room and he posted that on Facebook. So I posted something just to say, you know, I miss you. How are you? This looks beautiful. And he called me and it would be the last conversation we would have. But it was really poignant because he talked about the importance of her visit. And he didn't know much about the formal Japanese tea ceremony. And Yumi is her name. And I said, it sounds like a children's book. And then that's all that started to ignite the whole story. So I started writing the book and created these characters and the character of Yumi and the importance of friendship and compassion and peace and creating peace education. So the story is about this Yumi character traveling to different countries to bring peace. Is that right? Tell us more about the story itself. So basically, well, this is the cover of the little kids book that came out in July. And this is for four to eight years old. And this is the Keepers of the Garden of Peace. We wanted to have kids from schools and families at homes to be able to create a garden. We're actually doing an actual community garden where kids and senior citizens can come here in Los Angeles and be able to plant vegetables and flowers and beautify the First Baptist Church over here in Los Angeles. So what they do is they travel in this little magical orb ship. And they go to each of their countries to be able to talk about their culture, talk about the teas that are important to them and their individual cultures. And they start off in the cherry blossom tree, the tea house tree house in Japan, right outside of Mount Fuji. And then they go to South Africa to the waterfalls. They go to the Sun Temple in India. They go to the bamboo forest in China. And they go to the Murray River in Australia and then back to the tea house. So through that story, we get to explore the cultures of these animals. And they're her friends. They're her best friends. And they get to explore the cultures so that children in the world can learn that we are friends with our cultures. It doesn't matter the color of skin, the language they speak, or where they come from. It's really important for people and children to know that there can be peace in the world. And again, the animation is beautiful. We'll talk about that later. Tell us about the main character, Yumi. From what I understand from the beginning of the video, she's the great-granddaughter of someone from Japan. Tell us more about her character. Yeah, so there's a real true story that launches behind the fact that Jay was in the hospital and Yumi came to visit him. In the storybook, in the middle grade book that just came out, they get to go and plant peace poles. So you saw a video with Miki. And she is the great-granddaughter of Mashihisa Goi. He started in 1955, May Peace Prevail on Earth. And over the years and decades, they've planted over 300,000 peace poles around the world. And we got to plant one last week in the Yamashiro Restaurant during the 10th Annual Guan Luminary Awards. So Miki is a part of the journey with the Goi Peace Foundation. And her mother Maki plays the character of Obashan. And Obashan means grandmother. So you can see that she is the grandmother of Yumi. And they travel around the world. And so through the ceremonial process of tea, they get to talk about peace and cultures. And so it's the mirroring of the life with the story. So we're really fortunate to be partnered with the Goi Peace Foundation. Please tell us about the main character, Miki. So the main character is Yumi. And Miki Kamimura is the young great-granddaughter of Mashihisa Goi. Who actually started May Peace Prevail on Earth in 1955. So throughout the decades, there's been over 300,000 peace poles. We say planted, but they're placed around the world. And just to give you an example, I'm not sure if you can see this in your camera. But this is just a tabletop one that I have on my desk. But imagine these to go four feet, six feet, eight feet tall. And so when you plant them, you put them in a base. You can put it into concrete. You can make expandable foam or whatever to have it be stable in the ground. But we planted one up at Yamashiro during the 10th Annual Guan Luminary Awards last week. And we're also planting one at one of the churches here in Los Angeles to create a peace community garden. So what's really cool about it is May Peace Prevail on Earth is the one language. But you can choose up to four languages to go on this. So it's really universal and it really sends a beautiful message. And this is the Goi Peace Foundation out of Tokyo. Founded by Mashihisa Goi. But the granddaughter, Maki, and her daughter, the great-granddaughter, Mashihisa Goi, Miki, plays the voice of Yumi. So they're involved with the project and very much involved with Yumi's Universe and growing the brand. That's fantastic. Please tell us, you know, it's probably now as good a time as any in our world to talk about peace and promote peace. But tell us why is this specifically important for you to make this film and the book? So I've been involved in peace activism since the 90s. It's always been a really important topic. Now more than ever, I'm hearing from all of our global advisory board members, which range from Musi Halu out of Ethiopia to the Goi Peace Foundation, to Global Silent Moment, to all these places around the world. They saw the cover of this book when they were visiting Japan. My partners, Gwen and Douglas Wagner, went to the World Peace Day, and they brought this on a phone, and they got all this interest because everyone was saying through and through, this is the time, this is the time, this is the time. So we really have an opportunity here to teach our children to get along with each other, to teach how to be peaceful within, which is a really important topic because a lot of issues with mental health and a lot of the kids are having anxiety. They can't sleep. They're having nervousness. Because they're hearing and feeling what's going on in the world, whether they're watching the news or not. There's a lot of families that are affected by what's going on with the wars and just the horrible things that are happening in the world. We need to step up in the world of peace and conversation and community building. Yes, and again, the animation is so beautiful. Please tell us about how the animation came about, who was involved, and how did you end up doing it? So my very dear friend, Joel Christopher Payne, he worked at Disney. He's worked a lot with all different gaming, you know, in the gaming world. He's an amazing, talented artist. He's a fine artist as well as an animator, and he took my characters from my descriptions and created the characters. This was the first book that he did the cover for. And then the illustrations are really beautiful in the children's books. So you see, they have all the characters that will come as they travel. That's Obishan, the grandmother, and Yumi having tea. So Joel Christopher Payne is the magic wonder behind it, and then he uses a lot of different programs to animate. So on the Garden of Peace that won the Illuminate Film Festival and many film laurels, that animation was done by Alan B. Charity. And then Joel is doing the rest of it. He's the artistic director, but he also is doing all the animation now. So you might be seeing a mixture of a couple of different animators, but Joel Christopher Payne is my main guy. And the book is the new release and it's available on Amazon, right? What about the film itself? So the films, so we have animated music shorts right now. One of the songs that was written by myself and Davy Nathan, who's a Grammy nominated and Grammy award winning producer and songwriter called Chase in the Sun, that won Best Children's Song in the Hollywood Independent Music Awards. So our music is coming out. What I'm really excited about is the music and the films. So we have several music videos up on our YouTube channel, Bohemian Universe. Chase in the Sun was co-written by myself and Davy Nathan, an amazing songwriter and producer. He's a Grammy nominated, Grammy winner. All the musicians that I'm working with are just stellar. Chase in the Sun won Best Children's Song for the Hollywood Independent Music Awards. We have Mother Nature. We have all kinds of different music, because that's going to attract the brand. It's going to attract the children, getting them involved. We're also in the process of creating, I'm not sure if you know what the immersive dome experience. If you think about the sphere in Vegas, the domes come in different sizes. So we're working on a film that's in a 50 foot dome that will be able to have examples for kids that are in school and they come on a school tour or families on the weekends can go and be entertained by this immersive experience. So they go on the same journey as the book and they have all kinds of music and educational components with that as well. And you have volume one that came out, which is the countries that we, I think it's Japan, South Africa, Australia and China, I think. And then you have two more volumes, right? Briefly tell us about the next volumes. Yeah, so I'm just beginning to write. I have the outline of volume two and that's doing North and South America. And then volume three will be in Europe. So we'll be able to explore the different, you know, temples and northern lights and Native American landmarks. A lot of them are UNESCO heritage sites. So we're bringing a lot of education, you know, that will go inside of the curriculum for the school. So I'm working with an educator right now to bring curriculum into schools that can handle math, science, social studies, history, music, literature. So I'm really excited about that, including environmental education because it's important for us to take care of our planet and teaching the kids of how to create a place that's safe for living, safe for breathing, clean water. So there's a lot of elements that are being brought into UNI's universe. Now, you've also been involved with raising awareness of sex trafficking and human trafficking, you know, and this is a big topic. But tell us a little bit about your work there. And I think you're also writing a book on that as well. Yes, I've been an activist in the entertainment industry for decades. And I've been involved with the peace movement probably since the early 90s when I was working with Jane Goodall and the communities and schools with the gangs here in the San Fernando Valley. I've always been interested in human trafficking, social impact. Everything that I work on, whether it's a children's book or a short film, it has to have something that has meaning, educates or inspires people to get involved. So with The Rescue, which is my short film, I think it's won probably close to 25 international film awards right now. It's six minutes long. But being six minutes, you can get a lot of information out in a short period of time. So The Rescue talks about how the hotel industry is getting behind, teaching their employees how to look out for people that have been trafficked. Human trafficking is right underneath our nose, and it goes into the depths of the sleeping town, bedroom communities to the big cities. No area should not be left untouched with regard to bringing awareness because it's everywhere. There's approximately 300,000 children that disappear on an annual basis. That can range from foster care to runaway children to people that are kidnapped. It's so prevalent and so in our face, but it's the most hidden, multi-billion dollar industry. So it's taking a lot of people, a lot of huge organizations and activists that are bringing awareness out so we can be more proactive and trying to figure out how we can take this industry down. I'm not sure how it can be done, but I'm doing everything I can. So through my short films and writing, I'm writing a book right now on my own experience. And with Yumi, it's kind of taken over in a very big way. So I'm not sure if I'll get the book done by the end of this year, but certainly in 2026, it's my goal to get that book out. Now, again, as far as human trafficking and sex trafficking, raising awareness, of course, is a very important aspect. But can you tell us other ways that this can be stopped? Is it a law enforcement issue? Is it more of an investigative issue, intelligence? What would you say are the ways that this industry can be terminated because it's been so devastating for so many people? Well, as I mentioned, it's a multibillion-dollar industry, so money drives a lot of evil things. And it's going to take everyone. It's going to take the teachers. I notice in the airports now, I travel a lot, and it's just recently that I've noticed in the airports that they say if you need help in the restrooms, then there's different public service announcements that come out with the symbol of someone that might be signaling you in hand signals that they need help. I've actually seen that as well at the San Francisco airport as well. Yeah, I was in Des Moines this past weekend, and it was in the Des Moines airport bathroom. So I'm really thrilled to see that we're bringing more awareness around it because it is a topic that needs to be taken care of. I do have a dear friend that's been a huge activist in Washington, D.C., talking to the big multimedia social media platforms because there's the dark web that's going on, and a lot of trafficking happens with regard to that. So I'm not going to mention their names, but they're doing a lot of work to bring it to Congress and to bring people to the surface so we can raise awareness and bring the people that are responsible to the public and see what we can do. It's going to take a mountain of people to come on board, so as much as I can speak out on this, so thank you so much for bringing it out. It's very much different from the fantasy drawing of Yumi and her universe and the travels to bring peace, but when you notice that it's really about peace and self-love and community awareness. Tess, thank you so much. Any final thoughts and any future thoughts as far as Yumi's universe? You already mentioned the two sequences that are coming up, but your thoughts about what you're going to do next to bring more goodness to the world in that sense. Well, my books are available on Amazon and we have Yumi's universe channel on YouTube so you can watch all the animated music and join our community. Really, we need to grow our numbers to be able to work as a community so we can bring the awareness of peace-building initiatives. Next week I have my first meeting with an educator here in Los Angeles and we're working with one of the mayors of our community, the mayor of Santa Monica, to bring it into the schools. We bring education into the schools. It's going to be really important because there's going to be awareness within curriculum of all the major STEM and STEAM classes. And also we're working on a lot of collaboration with different organizations. There's a wake-up app that's being created so kids can wake up in the morning to music and meditation. It's really about bringing awareness for children to love themselves inside. Then the next level is loving within the family unit and then the community and then the global. So we have this step-by-step and hopefully we'll be able to implement that into Yumi clubs in the schools worldwide. Sounds fantastic, Tess. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much, Steve. Thank you so much for bringing me on your show. Thank you for watching another episode of Bay Area Innovators. If you enjoyed this episode and you know someone who should be on our show, please send us an email at sfbay.epochtimes.com. We would love to hear from you. Thank you and see you next week.