Before she left this world, Dr Jane Goodall watched her peace doves take flight one last time.
South Africa (16 November 2025) – The giant white doves, made from old bedsheets and carried high on poles, first appeared more than two decades ago when Jane was named a UN Messenger of Peace in 2002.
A group of Roots & Shoots students in Wisconsin wanted to honour Dr. Goodall and her mission of peace. Following her vision for the doves, they created the very first giant puppet.
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As Jane explained years later:
“I had a vision and I initiated the making of the giant peace doves. They’re made out of used bedsheets, with their heads made from wire or papier mâché. Young people gathered to fly them on long poles. One supports the head, one at each wing tip, and two for the fan-shaped tail. All around the world Roots & Shoots are making and flying them on Peace Day.”
One small act of creativity became a worldwide movement.
Today, Roots & Shoots groups in over 75 countries mark the UN International Day of Peace each September by crafting and flying their own versions of Jane’s doves. Some stick to her original design, while others, like our South African group, use recycled materials like plastic.
Roots & Shoots is the youth action programme Jane founded under the Jane Goodall Institute. It empowers young people to take practical steps that help people, animals, and the environment. The three pillars Jane believed were inseparably linked.
Through it, millions of young people have found ways to make a difference in their own communities, from planting trees to protecting wildlife to, yes, building peace doves that fly proudly above them.
Each dove shows that peace is possible, but it takes action and helping hands to soar.
“With the peace doves, we remind everyone of the truth they sometimes forget — that peace is possible,” Jane once said.
The most recent World Peace Day was celebrated on 21 September 2025, just weeks before Jane passed away peacefully in October.
Around the world, her doves filled the skies once more, carried by new generations of dreamers who still believe, as she did, that peace begins when we remember our shared humanity.
Before she left Earth, Jane Goodall saw her doves soar one last time and with them, the message she devoted her life to. That hope, once lifted, never truly lands.
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