MANKATO — She got to the ironic part right away.

"Do you guys think it’s weird that we’re here at a martial arts school to talk about peace?” Kylie Komaridis asked the kids, who were all sitting school style on the floor of a tae kwon do studio.

And the kids nodded.

But while this meeting of the Mankato chapter of Kids for Peace may have included kicks, punches and a handful of broken boards, the group came to learn a few things about avoiding violent situations.

Kids for Peace is one of the newest — and cutest — nonprofit groups in the area. Just launched in August, it’s open to any kid who wants to help spend a few hours each month learning how good it feels to help others, whether it’s by volunteering at the Backpack Food Program or, like Sunday, getting a lesson in verbal judo from Colby Winkler, owner of Lee’s Champion Tae Kwon Do.

Seated on the padded floor of Winkler’s studio Sunday, the kids are all ears and eyes as they’re taught that, while a person’s gut reaction to conflict may be to clench up his or her fists and prepare to fight, it might be a better idea to learn to diffuse potentially violent situations with humor, instead.

“What could you say to someone who calls you a name? What could you say if they said you were fat or stupid or ugly?” Winkler asks them.

A few shrug their shoulders. A few are shy. A few have been students of Winkler’s before and know the answers, but are presumably waiting for others to answer.

Winkler answers for them.

“If someone says to you, ‘Hey, you’re ugly!’ You can say, ‘Thanks for noticing, my mother said the same thing to me last night!”

The kids giggle, of course. Which is kind of the point. Such a response has the potential to end what could be an ugly, even violent situation.

That’s what Kids For Peace is all about — teaching kids that, even though violence in many forms surrounds us, they have the power to make choices that perpetuate positive energy, not more violence.

Komaridis and Liz Ratcliff, a pair of friends with similar outlooks on life, decided one day they wanted to do something for their kids that taught them from an early age to value goodwill and the idea of helping others whenever possible.

A quick search online led them to Kids for Peace, a national group that has chapters all over the country. The group paid for Komaridis and Ratcliff to fly out to San Diego for training. Upon their return, the chapter quickly formed and the first meeting was held.

Even though the group is young, Komaridis and Ratcliff say they’ve got big plans for the future.

“I perceive a lot of negativity in the world right now,” Ratcliff said. “We’re trying to change some of that.”

Komaridis said one of her goals was to provide another activity for kids to be involved in, one that carried a little more educational weight behind it.

“One of the reasons I got involved was to help turn Mankato into a more kid-friendly community, and one that focuses on the positives that children are doing, not the negatives,” she said. “I believe kids will copy kids — good or bad. Hopefully we can create a community where children feel empowered and aren’t afraid to get involved in making positive changes for their world.”

So far, the kids involved are enjoying it.

Nora Coughlan, 11, said she got involved when her friend Sophia Griffiths invited her to join. Once the group got going, they did a lot of things to help people, such as collect food for the BackPack Food Program, which provides weekend meals and snacks for qualifying kids.

“We get to do stuff that makes us feel good, too,” Coughlan said.

Added Griffiths, who is 11, “It’s to create peace, and help other people, like we’re doing with the BackPack program, or the Peace Packs that we’ll be doing.”

(Peace Packs are one of the few requirements of all Kids for Peace chapters. It involves learning about a foreign country, then decorating a backpack and filling it with needs specific to a child in that country.)

Emma Bodnar, also 11, said these kind of projects have a chilling effect on her ego.

“It makes me realize I’m not the center of attention,” she said.

To ask about getting your child involved with Kids for Peace, call Komaridis at 381-0799, or Ratcliff at 380-3937.