SINGAPORE - Into the mix, add a cup of friendship, one cup of rights and two cups of freedom.

This was in a "recipe" for peace that 61 international students, who took on the role of peace envoys, conveyed in a message to embassies yesterday, as part of Metropolitan YMCA Singapore's (MYMCA) first Embassies of the World event.

It was held in celebration of the United Nations International Day of Peace on Sept 20 (Wednesday).

The students were divided into teams of 10, who then visited 37 embassies and met their representatives. There, they read out a poem by Nele Hoffman, 11, a student from the German European School Singapore, describing peace as a recipe.

This was the winning poem in MYMCA's Peace Message Competition earlier this year. Nele imagined peace as a cake, meshing ingredients like forgiveness and hope together for the world to enjoy.

Embassies thanked the students and exchanged their own gifts and messages of peace in return.

"For Sweden, peace is a question of solidarity and cooperation," said Mr Nicki Khorram-Manesh, the Deputy Head of Mission at the Embassy of Sweden, reading his own message.

The student participants said the activity helped reinforce for them the importance of peace.

"The thing that really struck me was to see how attentive the ambassador was to our message," said Mr Chester Matthias Tan, 25, a student from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.

"Maybe that suggests that everybody hopes that peace is really that simple."