WhenRuth Pearl says it, she leans in and catches you in her stare. On first blush, you would not think that this quiet woman with the inquisitive gaze could generate such power. But suddenly you are aware of a passion derived from purpose, from someone who was driven to the edge and decided not to go over. Then she says it...

"This war is going to be won by the masses, not the individual."

It is a remarkable comment from someone who was motivated more than anyone by an individual. That person was her son, Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was killed by kidnappers in Pakistan in 2002. He was her only son, married for only three years. He had only recently found out he was going to be a father, and now, on the other side of the planet, he had been brutally taken away from his mother.

Her first understandable reaction was grief and hopelessness. Ruth felt that it made no sense for her to start something new because her life was over. She felt depressed and unable to move forward. And then she started to find deep inside herself a natural inclination to fight. An inclination to fight evil and to create hope where there was hopelessness. She did it to show her daughters and her husband that there was a point in moving forward. The question was how she could pursue this fight.

During this time the Wall Street Journal had some of their lawyers talk to Ruth and her husband Judea about what they wanted to do next. From across the country and across the world, people were sending them notes, flowers, and in some cases money. People were writing letters asking what they could do to help. The Journal asked if they had thought about starting a foundation. After some discussion they drafted the documents to channel the outpouring of good will to the foundation. The problem was they had no idea what the foundation was going to do.

Journalism was obvious because of Daniel's work with The Journal. But he was equally passionate about music, so that came to the front also. In August, after many complications, Daniel's funeral was held. Sadly, this coincided with his birthday in October, which made his family and friends wonder what he would have done if he was alive. The collective decision was that Daniel, an accomplished violin player, would have celebrated with a jam session. It echoed the way Daniel and his wife Mariane had celebrated their wedding the next day with a jam session with six bands filled with his musical friends from around the world. This was the seed of a new idea: to contact all his friends and continue the tradition with the Daniel Pearl World Music Day.

Ruth hired a two-person public relations firm in September of 2002 and soon they had amassed over 118 concerts in 18 countries. Not to be outdone, the journalism side of the foundation was starting to gain momentum also. Ruth and the foundation decided to partner with the Alfred Friendly Press Fellowships. Since 1984, this unique organization had taken journalists from Third World countries, given them training and development with American organizations and then contracted with people throughout the world of journalism to find them places at Western publications. As such, partnerships had developed throughout the world and were the perfect vehicles for the Daniel Pearl Fellowship program. The writers in the program are midlevel and usually in their thirties.

Fasih Ahmed was the first Daniel Pearl Fellow from Pakistan, and the process was not an easy one. Not only do the candidates have to get through the process developed by Alfred Friendly, they then have to get past Ruth. For Ruth, the first was the hardest, both because of the newness of the process and the rawness of her emotions over the killing of her son. The Alfred Friendly picked the final five or six people and showed the Pearls their essays. They were looking for someone who was open-minded and willing to learn from new experiences. One person seemed to fill the bill, one who was well-connected and yet wanted to find his own way in the world. This was Fasih Ahmed.

There is one more twist to the Daniel Pearl Fellowship. The winner is always Muslim, and as part of his or her stay in the United States the winner must spend two weeks working at a Jewish publication. Nothing could better express Daniel's spirit. He was so at ease in other cultures and with other people that at one point during Daniel's capture the Pakistanis started claiming he was a spy. What Ruth discovered later was that none of the journalists she met, regardless of religion or race, believed this. And she wanted to instill this spirit of acceptance and understanding right into the heart of the award.

Asih was perfect. He had even covered Daniel's story when it was happening, and he too never bought into the spy theory. When he came over and worked his two weeks at The Jewish Journal in Los Angeles, he told Ruth that what surprised him the most was that the employees there knew more about him than he knew about them. Many times the Fellows continue to write for the local papers after they have returned home. In Asih's case, he was so inspired he returned to Pakistan and started his own television station, trying to replicate the journalism he had seen in America.

Last November, a shorter 5 week fellowship program specifically for editors was begun, and the winner was an editor with The Saudi Gazette. When the Pearls picked him up and had lunch, he told them that they were the first Jewish people he had met. A week later he told Ruth that she reminded him of his mother; all mothers are the same. Ruth smiled and thought, "Hallelujah!"

The current Daniel Pearl Fellow is Amr Emam, hailing from Egypt. He was hosted this year by the San Francisco Chronicle, where he quickly found himself contributing. One proud Sunday he published two bylines in the same issue, for articles on the press in the Middle East, and about changes occurring in the Middle East.

And the Fellows do seem to go back with a new vigor, which sometimes leads to opportunities such as Asih's television station, and sometimes opportunities to get in trouble with the locals. A Fellow from Yemen was inspired enough to extend his stay so he could go back and lead journalism training back home. This did not sit well, and after one particularly sharp quote about the Arab journalism associations, there was a brief movement to impose a goal that no Arab journalist should be trained by anyone in the West.

Daniel Pearl Music Days never encountered any such resistance. Ruth calls music an interfaith dialogue that all people understand. Last year, Music Days spanned 36 countries over the course of two weeks in the fall. Cameroon joined because they were working with a partner program, iEARN, and Ruth met a kid in the program who mentioned he had a band. Ruth thought it was probably a small group of friends, but it turned to be a well known group. He had never told her because he thought playing in a band was embarrassing for a journalist. He dedicated a concert in Cameroon to prove that journalism and music can walk hand in hand. They also use a streaming Internet radio station, eStage, to reach listeners on every continent (including 19 Muslim countries in 2006), allowing people to listen on their computers and be connected with the world.

Ruth sees the music as supporting their "war of the masses" in two vital ways: weakening the opposition and empowering their troops. This is what keeps them going, because Ruth and her husband Judea are not young any more. Recently, Judea and his Daniel Pearl Dialogues partner Akbar Ahmed were given an award that is directed towards people who had started a nonprofit entity after they were 60. This was meant to encourage people to stay involved. Ruth felt almost guilty about her husband receiving the prize because, as Judea had said in his acceptance speech, they were the only ones who had not asked to be there. The others had chosen to go into philanthropy whereas Ruth had fallen into it because of Daniel's death.

The third leg supporting the Daniel Pearl Foundation is their youth initiatives. The idea was to address youth and direct them to journalism. Their executive director at the time was based in Washington, D.C., and there she found iEARN. Ruth and her husband Judea were drawn to them because iEARN was already connected in 119 countries and 20,000 schools, but they did not have any journalism programs. So the Pearls approached them and said that they would like to develop this with friends of Danny and create a high school journalism program called The Pearl Reporter. The participants got to publish articles on the web, and act almost as an Associated Press for high school journalism. The students produce a newsletter that is distributed online so the global perspective reverberates between all the schools.

In March there was a teacher convention in New York City and New York Channel 13 invited seven of the students from five countries to participate. Their teachers were stunned by how effective they were in talking about their home countries. The kids get to meet AP, UPI, Bloomberg and others. They got to talk about the impact of being a Pearl Reporter. For the next step, they are now moving the program into middle schools.

Becoming a Pearl Reporter requires filling out a 15-page application online. The Pearl Foundation worked with The New York Times and the Columbia School of Journalism to develop the certification program. The program will also reach teachers, who can use it to encourage their students to get involved earlier in the process. The aim is to produce a generation of journalists who care about truth and integrity. And now they are looking at video, blogs and other channels to extend their efforts.

In sum, the Pearls are all about encouraging as many cross-cultural connections as possible. They receive offers every day from other groups wanting to work with them. For example, there is an organization in Tel Aviv that wishes to construct the Daniel Pearl Floor to allow visiting journalists to have a place where they can meet and exchange ideas. This could be a nucleus for expanding the Daniel Pearl Fellows into other places and venues to continue to support journalists.

The foundation also serves as an inspiration for many awards and dedications. Danny's high school has named a journalism school after him. It is magnet school within the existing high school. The students here do a concert every Music Day to create awareness. Music Days are unique in that they continue to be a vehicle for raising awareness, not funds. None of the Music Days events try to raise money. Rather, they exist to give people a moment to pause, listen, and think. The school administrators see the value of this. One of the students says, "We can all learn from Danny."

Last year Music Day was enhanced with the addition of eStage, an online gallery and radio station. This has grown to be not just a resource for the music of Daniel and all musical participants, but also poetry, art, articles, and dedications reflecting Danny's lifetime of work. One of the most visited areas of the site hosts songs dedicated to Daniel. These range from original compositions such as one entitled "A Song for a Son," to an REM song dedication, to Elton John dedicating his song "Daniel" to Daniel Pearl when he plays it at a concert.

Ruth and her team are trying to update the website in time for this year's Music Days. Where does the money come to fund all of this? They get inundated with concert requests for the name, but again they don't want to make fundraising and licensing part of the events. They fund this with grants to the foundation, speaking engagements by Judea and Ruth, royalties from books and sharing prizes that they get on behalf of the foundation. The board members give speeches and donate the proceeds from those activities. The final funders are individuals, some who have been there from the first and darkest days. Ruth tells the story of one woman who gives ten dollars every month. When she missed two months, she sent the thirty dollars the following month as three separate ten dollar checks. Ruth is very curious to meet her.

Why does Ruth feel music is such an important part of her son's legacy? She tells a pointed story of the connections bonding sports and music. Years ago in Israel, a 16 year old suicide bomber failed and was subsequently captured. When the authorities interviewed him, they asked whether he would kill himself in a crowd with babies. His answer was yes. Then they asked if he would do the same ata soccer stadium. He couldn't believe his interrogators would ask such a question. Such is the worldwide dedication to sport. And music too can create a universal bond.