Despite new home, big challenges remain
PORTLAND | Preparing for its fifth season, Seeds of Peace is moving to a new home in Otisfield and bracing for a tough challenge: promoting understanding between Arab and Israeli youngsters at a time when Mideast peace prospects seem dim.
The summer program that brings together teen-agers from countries that have been longtime adversaries has acquired Camp Powhatan, which will become its permanent site.
Because the decades-old camp on Pleasant Lake has fallen into disrepair, Seeds of Peace faces the prospect of extensive work to upgrade plumbing, the sewer system and other basic facilities.
The bigger challenge will be to overcome the apparent breakdown in Mideast peace negotiations that could hinder efforts to build rapport between the 13- to 15-year-old Arab and Israeli campers.
John Wallach, the former journalist who founded Seeds of Peace, has no illusions that the job will be easy.
“The camp becomes much more important in a climate of hostility,” Wallach said Tuesday. “The easiest time for us was in the euphoria after the signing [of the peace agreement] on the White House lawn in 1993.
“1994 was probably our easiest year,” he said. “1995 and 1996 were much harder, and this will probably be our toughest year.”
One Arab country already has told Wallach it could no longer afford to pay the air fare for its youngsters who attend the camp. Wallach said he suspects rising Mideast tensions, not money, were the real cause.
Wallach, the longtime White House correspondent and foreign editor for the Hearst newspapers in Washington, was in Maine this week to build support for the camp.
Camp director Tim Wilson has been overseeing efforts to get Powhatan in shape for the arrival of the 200 campers July 13. A team of Job Corps volunteers is scheduled to arrive in June to help with maintenance work.
The program was held at Powhatan during its first two years but then moved to Camp Androscoggin in Wayne. Seeds of Peace was able to acquire Powhatan for a nominal price, ensuing a permanent home for the program and enabling it to expand from two weeks to five weeks.
“For four years, we’ve been sort of itinerant campers ourselves,” said Wallach, who hopes the new site will enable Seeds of Peace to serve youngsters from nations involved in other conflicts. Plans are in the works for a 1998 program for Greek and Turkish children from Cyprus.
Seeds of Peace, which also will enroll youngsters from America’s inner cities, uses conflict resolution techniques in an effort to build trust and overcome each side’s historic dehumanization of the other.
That kind of work has brought Wallach the kind of fulfillment he never found as a journalist.
“Having covered a lot of wars, I felt a need to do something personal to try to help. This has gradually taken over my life,” he said.