Directions: From the end of the Council Chamber corridor, go downstairs and the Committee Room are to your right at the bottom (from the Temple’s Reception, turn left into the ‘Health’ Wing – through 2 double doors – and the meeting rooms are on your left at the bottom of the stairs.
Committee Rooms 38 and 39, which are regularly used for community groups and bookings, contain some spectacular peace maps linking past and present.
The old map on the ‘window wall’ was installed from the building’s opening in 1938, and records the peacekeeping mandates of the League of Nations through the interwar years: a fragment of the ‘old world’ of colonial Empires just months before this geography was obliterated forever by World War Two.
The new map to the RH side shows the 2020 ‘Global Peace Index’, compiled by Vision of Humanity and the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) – which represents indicators as wide ranging as conflicts and terrorism, to social inclusion and health, to rank the nations of the world from most to least peaceful.
In 2018, as culmination of a month of events marking the Temple’s 80th Anniversary, young people past and present gathered together to unveil a plaque outside Room 39 celebrating UNA Exchange Founder Robert Davies, and generations of international youth volunteers between Wales and the world. The plaque was unveiled by Robert himself, who had travelled from Sweden – and was very surprised to see his own name on the plaque! But as he said on the day, the many thousands of youth volunteers over the generations have been Wales’ ambassadors to the world – all planned from this modest little room.
