Dylan offered the following inspiring remarks to USIP and AFSA leadership and staff, as well as representatives from the U.S. Department of States and U.S. Agency for International Development:

I am very honored and grateful to receive this award and humbled to be speaking here at the U.S. Institute of Peace in the nation’s capital. I’d like to thank the American Foreign Service Association; Ian Houston, its executive director; and Ambassador Stephenson, its president, for providing me with the incredible opportunity to participate in this contest. I would also like to thank the Honorable Nancy Lindborg, president of the United States Institute of Peace and USIP’s staff for having this reception and sponsoring the Contest, and Semester at Sea and Vince Schaff for sponsoring this contest and providing me with a scholarship for the program. An international education of the caliber that Semester at Sea offers is undoubtedly one of the best college experiences and I’m very excited to participate in Semester at Sea’s educational voyage. Of course, I would also like to thank Perri Green, the coordinator of this contest, and the members of my family, who have showed me by example the virtues of determination and a strong work ethic.

What particularly attracted me to AFSA’s Essay Contest was its emphasis on conflict resolution and peace building. This essay contest is here to inspire a new mindset in high school students. When each of this year’s 700 applicants saw the prompt, they were asked to find a peace-building solution to a current conflict. The prompt did not even consider violence to be an option. This contest has shown all of its participants - and especially me - that peace must always be a priority. So once again, I would like to thank AFSA, USIP, and Semester at Sea for your sponsorship of this contest and the work you do every day to show the next generation that peace is not peripheral, it is a central goal for humankind.

So, I came across this story: Two fish are swimming together in a stream and one fish speeds past them and says “the water’s great today!” Two minutes pass in silence and the fish look at each other and say, “what’s water?” I think this metaphor is particularly applicable to adolescents today because the fish are so distracted by the events in the stream, that they fail to recognize the force that they need to thrive, just like we adolescents who are so distracted by a world saturated with violence that we can’t even see peace as a viable part of the picture. With today’s media flooded with news on terror attacks, failed states, ethnic violence, and overall intransigence, an average adolescent could easily grow up fearful and despairing over a destructive world. Even President Obama, when receiving his Nobel Peace Prize, despaired over how “war… appeared with the first man.” We get an impression that war is intractable, and with political pundits on both ends of the spectrum advocating for cracking down with more violence, peace doesn’t seem to be a part of the equation.

What particularly attracted me to AFSA’s Essay Contest was its emphasis on conflict resolution and peace building. This essay contest is here to inspire a new mindset in high school students. When each of this year’s 700 applicants saw the prompt, they were asked to find a peace-building solution to a current conflict. The prompt did not even consider violence to be an option. This contest has shown all of its participants - and especially me - that peace must always be a priority. So once again, I would like to thank AFSA, USIP, and Semester at Sea for your sponsorship of this contest and the work you do every day to show the next generation that peace is not peripheral, it is a central goal for humankind.

USIP welcomed Dylan Borne and his family to Washington, D.C. this week as part of his award package.  While here in our nation’s capital, Dylan also met with Secretary of State John Kerry and USIP President Nancy Lindborg and spent time touring the Capitol building and meeting with staff from Congressman Steve Scalise’s office. His essay on using new technology to provide girls in Afghanistan safe educational opportunities beat out 700 other entries from across the country and also earned him a scholarship to a Semester at Sea voyage.