Back in 2006, marketing entrepreneur Lisa Schultz launched TheWhole9.com – a place for creative people to meet online and showcase their work. About that time, MySpace was sold for a few hundred million, and word around the watercooler was that someday we’d sell TheWhole9.com for a bunch of money and use that money to change the world.

In 2010, we opened The Whole 9 Gallery in Culver City’s Arts District, and inspired by Pep Bonet’s photos of Sierra Leone’s amputee soccer team, launched The Peace Project, and short of a few hundred million dollars, got to work!

Driven by our belief that creativity and community can change the world, we announced our first Call-for-Artists to TheWhole9.com community. Within six weeks, 700 artists from 30 countries shared their visions of peace. We saw how peace looks through the eyes of American artists; and that to artists outside the U.S., it often looks far different – Elena Rodina of Russia said that peace was having a home “and not being afraid to lose it” while Mihaela Cirlugeaj from Romania said that peace means “that children can play unafraid and free.”

Since then, The Peace Project, powered by thousands of artists from TheWhole9.com, has inspired hope and utilized innovative ideas, creative thinking and audacious initiatives to help transform thousands of lives in West Africa, the Philippines and the Middle East.

When COVID hit in 2020, we quickly converted The Whole 9 Gallery into a food distribution site and sent a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of food home with our neighbors. This inspired us to transform the gallery into Gratitude Market where we sell artisanal goods and specialty foods from around the world. Gratitude Food Pantry lives within Gratitude Market and is open to provide food to our neighbors.

Beloved community. Peace lives here.