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An “inspowered” kick-off to the 2019 GATHER Fellowship

Apr 16, 2019 / 1 Comment

What happens when Egyptians, Israelis, Pakistanis, Palestinians, Americans (two by way of Romania and Rwanda), a Turk, a Tunisian, a Jordanian, and a Canadian (now living in Mexico) meet up in Sweden?

They coin a new phrase.

The term “inspowered” may have arisen by accident through the kind of exhaustion that comes after a week of intense project and community building, but the Fellows immediately adopted it as their own. Because inspowered (a combination of inspired and empowered) is exactly what they were feeling by the end of their time together.

The 2019 GATHER Fellowship incubator began in Sigtuna, a small, lakeside village an hour’s drive from Stockholm. It was there that the Fellows met and began to learn about each other’s lives and life’s work. Through a needs mapping exercise and a candlelit personal storytelling session, the 16 social innovators began to realize that while leading change can be lonely work, they are not in it alone.

They participated in a storytelling and marketing workshop that prepared them for a speed-dating style pitch session with graduate students from Uppsala University, the Nordic region’s oldest university and one of the finest in the world. The students, who are studying conflict transformation, posed many questions to the Fellows, and were grateful to see real-world manifestations of their studies.

After two days, the Fellows departed Sigtuna for Stockholm, and spent the next morning at Parliament, learning the nuances of Swedish government and meeting with four members of Parliament who graciously answered questions for an hour and a half.

After lunch, they spent time in a co-working space called Norrsken House and discovered that social entrepreneurs are treated like rock-stars in Sweden. At Norssken, the Fellows explored new frameworks for utilizing the engine of business to power social change.

Fellows met in small groups to workshop their projects and support each other, and they also met one-on-one with Seeds of Peace and SE Forum staff who could advise them on specific issues. On the final night, they demonstrated both thoughtfulness and thought leadership as participants in a series of panels: changing societies through storytelling and the arts, creating platforms for systemic change, bridging differences through education and dialogue, and empowering marginalized communities through enterprise.

Saying goodbye was not easy. But the Fellows will meet again—every week in fact—on video check in calls. They will continue to “inspower” each other, and over the course of the fellowship, we will shine a spotlight on each of them and their projects. So stay tuned … you just might become inspowered yourself!

Grounds for Peace
Guideposts

Sep 7, 2010 / No Comments

It’s the International Day of Peace! Read this inspiring story about a special camp that promotes just that.

BY JOHN WALLACH | There was only one story on the news that February morning in 1993. In our home outside Washington, D.C., my wife, Janet, and I sat staring at the TV screen. A car bomb had exploded beneath the World Trade Center in New York. Commentators speculated that the terrorist act was the work of Muslim extremists.

As a journalist I was used to covering stories like this. Although I wasn’t reporting this one, I couldn’t escape the terrible irony for anyone in the media. A terrorist’s aim is to spread fear; reporting his action means he succeeds. Fear, in turn, leads to hate—which invites terror in response. It was a vicious cycle. I asked myself again as I had so often, Can people ever stop hating?

I remember the first time the question came to me. I was just six years old, lying awake in my bedroom in Scarsdale, New York, wondering at the fates that had let my parents survive and me be born. German Jews, they were taken from their home in Cologne to a death camp. They’d escaped, made their way to Nazi-occupied France, been caught, re-imprisoned, and escaped once again. A daring French priest guided them across the Pyrenees to Spain, from which my parents finally made their way to America and New York. Two years later I was born.

Even at age six I understood how rare our good fortune had been. A million Jewish children, I was told, had been burned in the ovens. What a “million” was I couldn’t have known—only that hate could do unthinkable things.

Can people stop hating? As I got older the question grew more insistent. One of the reasons I became a foreign correspondent was a desire to learn about other people—and help them learn about one another. If we knew one another, would we go on hating?

Janet is also a writer and in 1987 we accepted a reporting assignment in the Middle East. We lived for months with ordinary Palestinian and Israeli families. We shopped with them in the street bazaars, ate with them, played with their kids, went with them to synagogue or mosque, observed their decent, hardworking daily lives. And were struck by how alike they were. How much they had in common…far more than the differences that fatally divided them.

Yet because they never knew one another, zealots could sow fear and hate.

Another thread was woven into the pattern of our lives when Janet and I sent our younger son to a summer camp in Maine. There, Mike was thrown in with boys from different backgrounds. At first there were the usual misunderstandings and frictions among various groups. But the camp experience had a way of erasing these tensions. Bunking, swimming, eating, canoeing together led to bonding across cultures and classes.

All this, I think, was at work in my subconscious when I rose to make a toast at a Washington dinner party honoring Shimon Peres, then Israel’s foreign minister. The Egyptian ambassador and a representative of the PLO attended and I’d been included as part of the press corps. After dinner I stood to salute the peace efforts being explored by both sides. Then, without any intention of doing this, I suddenly heard myself saying, “I’m planning to hold a camp this summer for teenagers from the Middle East. I’d like to invite each of the governments represented here to send us 15 of your brightest youngsters. Perhaps in a casual setting we can sow some small seeds of peace.”

The surprise on the faces before me was nothing compared to my own astonishment at the words that had come out of my mouth. The delegations hastily conferred. No one wanted to appear to be against peace; before I knew it Seeds of Peace was born.

Fearing the governments would back out, I called a press conference the following morning. By afternoon the news was out: Israel, Egypt and the PLO were cooperating on a peace camp!

At first I carried on with my job for the Hearst newspapers. I was staying up nights to work out the endless details of getting the idea off the ground. We contacted Mike’s camp and found that we could book the facilities later that summer after the regular season was over. Of course this took money. We raided our savings, raised funds from family and friends to reserve the camp. The different governments chose the kids who would attend; we asked only that they be top students, proud of their heritage and proficient in English. Future leaders were who we wanted.

The last week of August 1993—six months after the World Trade Center bombing—45 boys arrived at the camp. In the bunkhouses they were assigned cots side by side with those they’d been brought up to regard as mortal enemies.

At first the kids were edgy and the chaperones appointed by each government overprotective. But before long, the youngsters were sharing universal camp experiences, such as lost sneakers, swapped jeans, mixed-up towels, awful camp food. (“American breakfast cereal is much too sweet!”) Bottom line, these were teenagers! Soon they were swapping tapes of favorite pop singers, playing baseball and soccer together, even attending each other’s worship services.

Before my eyes, my old question was being answered. In one small group, in one small place, antagonists were discovering that the enemy has a face.

But I soon learned personally some of the hard steps on the path to peace: the ancient, intractable conflicts of history and culture. Listening—really listening—to the other side turned out to be the toughest, and most important, skill required to build peace. We enlisted conflict-management experts to guide “coexistence classes” that became the heart of the camp program.

Every day the campers met in the big hall for a minimum of two hours, encouraged to confront the volatile issues. Who has a moral right to the land of Palestine? Who should govern Jerusalem? The boys were asked to share personal tragedies too, the death of a family member—perhaps at the hand of relatives of the kid in the next chair. The facilitators laid down only three rules. No violence. No insults. No interrupting. A pencil was passed from hand to hand; only the boy holding the pencil was allowed to speak.

By the end of the two weeks, the kids had formed friendships unimaginable back home. A Hollywood producer heard about the project and offered much-needed funding—if the governments relaxed their boys-only policies to include girls. A little to my surprise, all agreed.

We were off to a promising start. We extended the camp period to three and a half weeks and soon were holding three sessions every summer, hosting close to 200 kids at each one. With the camps taking more and more of my hours and energy, I decided to devote myself full time to Seeds of Peace. It was a scary step, but I’m convinced that God has a plan for every life, and I believed that this was part of his for mine.

In February 1995, I left Hearst. We sold our home and with $50,000 and a staff of four became a year-round nonprofit organization devoted to waging peace. A Palestinian-American friend of mine, George Rebh, designed our camp T-shirt: green and white, with three youngsters holding hands, their shadows forming an olive branch.

How fragile, though, was that little sapling! Bad news from home was sure to provoke episodes like the one that occurred during the fifth year of the camps in 1997. It was July 30, 11 days into this particular session. The kids were having breakfast when one of the Israeli girls received a phone call from home and came back to the dining room in tears. Arab terrorists had set off a bomb in the central vegetable market, the Mahane Yehuda in downtown Jerusalem, causing many deaths and injuries.

Panic swept the Israeli campers, fearful for their families. I asked everyone to assemble in the big hall. Instead of milling about, as they had the day before, the kids huddled in groups, Jews on one side of the room, Arabs on the other.

I told the kids this was a test for us all, exactly the kind of terror Seeds of Peace was formed to combat. “These are the situations,” I said, “when it’s most important that we go on talking to each other. Let’s see if we can make the sound of peace louder than the noise of war.”

Reluctantly at first, they did talk. “I think the Israelis will hate us so much,” said one Palestinian boy, “that they won’t let Jewish kids come here again.”

Back and forth they went. Arab and Jew, each side clearly convinced that the other was the aggressor in the long conflict and itself the victim. But out of the morning’s exchanges slowly emerged the realization that when violence occurs, both sides are victims.

Another Palestinian boy expressed it in a shaky voice: “I am crying because we are human beings and the people we killed were human beings too.”

Tolerance and understanding won out that day. But with every killing back home, the camps threatened to erupt in hostility. Some day, I feared, an eruption would blow the program apart.

By the fall of 1999, we’d sponsored peace camps for seven summers, graduated more than 2,000 youngsters, had an annual budget of three million dollars from private donations and were also holding camps in Europe and Asia to bring together Serbs and Albanians, Indians and Pakistanis, Greeks, Turks and Cypriots. In volatile Jerusalem itself, we’d opened a year-round Seeds of Peace Center, a 5,000-square-foot building dedicated to coexistence.

Then in the summer of 2000, the Maine camp nearly self-destructed.

This time it was an Arab who’d been killed—and he was the cousin of one of our own campers. The Palestinians demanded to hold their own funeral to coincide with the one back home. Such funerals are occasions for emotional anti-Israeli demonstrations. Because free expression of feelings was at the very heart of our program, we had to allow the funeral to take place.

The grieving, angry boys and girls gathered in an old frame building near the dining room. From where I stood outside, gazing at the serene vista of woods and lakeshore, I could hear their sobs, shouts and the sound of pounding drums. At last I was permitted to enter. Some of the kids were in tears, some praying, some calling for revenge on the Israeli campers. Would this be the end of everything?

One boy made sure I was looking, then stripped off his Seeds of Peace T-shirt, threw it on the floor and stomped on it. Other campers followed till half the kids in the hall were grinding their shirts into the pine floorboards.

Can people stop hating? I’d never been less sure than at this explosive moment when everything I’d worked for was being rejected.

Almost without thinking I started to pull my own Seeds of Peace shirt over my head. “You’re right and I’m wrong. If ‘peace’ is just a word on a T-shirt, I don’t want to wear mine either!”

The kids stared. For a long moment the room was silent as one small experiment in peace hung in the balance.

Then the Arab boy whose cousin had been killed picked up his shirt and slipped it on. Another youngster retrieved his. Then another and another, until all had put their shirts back on.

For that one moment, at least, I had the answer to my question.

About John Wallach
In 1993, John Wallach founded Seeds of Peace. Though he has passed away, his dream has expanded to include young leaders from Cyprus, South Asia and the Balkans, as well as the Middle East. Learn more at seedsofpeace.org.

Read John Wallach’s article at Guideposts ››

Seeds of Peace: Children crusade against conflict
New Delhi Television

Jul 21, 2003 / No Comments

BY MAYA MIRCHANDANI | MAINE, UNITED STATES Seeds of Peace International, a non-profit organisation, held a camp at Maine in the United States, for students from different parts of the world that have been affected by conflict in one form or another.

The NGO conducts such camps for children who are often the most invisible faces in areas ridden with conflict and violence.

At the Otisfield camp, there were a few Indians and Pakistanis among the 170 children who attended the camp.

The camp called Seeds of Peace is a rare opportunity for some children to free themselves from the violence that surrounds their life and instead, tell their stories.

Detox programme

Deep in the woods of Maine, Seeds of Peace brings together teenagers from conflict zones. So that the children can literally see the face of their enemy. They call this a “detox programme”. The Seeds of Peace summer camp was started in 1993 mainly for children from Israel and Palestine.

Since then, the programme has been expanded to include children from other Arab countries, Balkans and Afghanistan. The summer camp since last year has also been inviting small contingents of children from India and Pakistan. Out of the 170 kids in the camp, there are 12 each from Mumbai and Lahore.

“We never thought we’d stay in the same bunk, sleep with them. We never thought they’d be so friendly. But we met at Zurich airport and became best friends in five minutes. There were no groups like Indians separate and Pakistanis separate. There were girls separate and boys separate!” said Ira Shukla, a student of Yashodham School, Mumbai.

Coexistence sessions

Apart from the fun and games of summer camp, the children went through daily hour-long coexistence sessions. In such sessions, children, armed with their own narratives, talked about everything from the Partition to Kashmir to religion.

“We went to coexistence sessions and sometimes it became hot. But we talked and became friends and it was only then that it got less intense and we learnt how to respect and trust and communicate with each other,” said Tabish Islam, a student of St Anthony’s College, Lahore.

The Seeds of Peace International camp is located along the shore of a pristine lake in rustic Maine. It has become a place where children, exposed to conflict, forget for a while the hatred that surrounds them back home.

Unique opportunity

For the children, particularly from Pakistan and India, the camp provides a unique opportunity to engage with each other in an atmosphere that allows them to set aside their history books and leave as friends.

“Kids feel a certain amount of power and legitimacy because they feel they come as ambassadors representing their countries,” says Aaron Miller, president, Seeds of Peace International.

“When you listen to their coexistence sessions, you see they are presenting positions of their respective governments or that they have been taught as Indians or Pakistanis and Afghans. What happens during these sessions is that they hear what they have never heard before. The other side’s position,” adds Miller.

It’s a camaraderie that allows kids to join forces in every way from painting mehndi patterns on the each others hands to improvising a dholak from an empty water can as they cheer a volleyball game.

But as they prepare to go back home after a special meeting with President Bush and Congressmen in Washington, they have all been forewarned that the challenge ahead is to hold on to what they have learnt in the past month – even if they face opposition.

Youthful exuberance

“I will tell my people at home that we don’t have to hate Indians. That we should learn from history, not follow it. The Indians I met here opened my mind. If we try and trust each other we can live together in peace,” said Faizan Rasool, a student of St Anthony College, Lahore.

After having had the time of their lives, with their youthful confidence they are determined to at least stay in touch with each other. If for nothing else, to carry on their debates further.

“It’s now up to us to develop the friendship further when we go back and solve the problems which we have not had time to solve in the camp,” said Siddarth Shah, a student of New Era School, Mumbai.

And keeping this promise to themselves and to each other will prove to be the ultimate test of will and of hope for a lasting peace between countries – something that the adult leadership seems unable to create.

Seeds of Peace
Journal of the Society for International Development

Jan 1, 1996 / No Comments

John Wallach reports on the unique ‘Seeds of Peace’ initiative which brings together Arab and Israeli children to build friendship and communication in the place of hate and mistrust

Making peace

‘Before I came here, I felt like I was walking in a dark room, I had opinions without pictures. Seeds of Peace is like a door out of the dark, I’ve learned there are fences of superstition among all of us. We have old opinions of each other and we’re here to destroy those fences. The bravery peace needs is not any less than the bravery war needs.’ (Shouq Tarawneh, Jordanian student aged 15)

The same theme was echoed by Laith Aafeh, a fourteen-year-old Palestinian who noted that ‘making peace is much harder than making war. It takes time. It takes care. It takes patience.”

Laith and Shouq had just spent their summer living, eating and sleeping in wooden bunks with the first Israelis that either of them had ever met. Laith was among the initial group of forty-six Arabs and Israelis who became a footnote to history on September 13 1993 when former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Chairman Yasser Arafat signed, in their presence, the Israeli-PLO Declaration of Principles on the South Lawn of the White House. President Clinton told the distinguished audience that included Presidents George Bush and Jimmy Carter and former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger, George Shultz and James Baker: ‘In this entire assembly, no one is more important than the group of Israeli and Arab children who are seated with us today.’

Indeed, these children have succeeded where their elders have failed for generations before them: they spent a month making peace with each other, real peace, at a summer camp in Maine. But the task was not easy for them. It had been an emotional roller coaster that was at times painful but ultimately exhilarating.

The Seeds of Peace programme

Seeds of Peace, now in its fourth year, brings thirteen-to-fifteen-year-old teenagers from opposing sides of the conflict in the Middle East and the Balkans to a summer camp in Maine where they get to know one another in a relaxed and supportive environment. The aim is a simple one: to build friendships between teenagers who have been taught all their lives to hate and distrust one another, and to use these new friendships to foster communication, negotiation and interchange so that they can better understand each other’s perspectives on the important issues that divide them.

Seeds of Peace takes up where governments leave off, attempting to fulfil the hope of peace treaties that are signed but that remain essentially pieces of paper. Seeds of Peace carries out a task that governments are neither equipped for nor very interested in: transforming the hopes for peace into a new reality on the ground among populations that have been taught for decades to distrust and hate on another.

The programme fosters education, discussion and emotional growth through both competitive and co-operative activities and emphasizes the importance of developing non-violent mechanisms of resolving conflict. Int he three years of its operation over three hundred male and female teenagers have come from Israel, Palestine (the West Bank and Gaza), Egypt, Jordan, Morocoo, and, for the first time last summer, from Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Campers are selected in a competitive process; the only prerequisite is that they must have a working knowledge of English. Initially each candidate is recommended by his or her school and then asked to write an essay on the following subject: ‘Why I Want to Make Peace with the Enemy.’ In Israel, Jordan and Morocco, the essays are judged by the Ministry of Education. In Egypt, Palestine, Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, they are judged by a mixed panel of officials and private citizens.

The final step of the selection process is a personal interview. Candidates are awarded extra points if they demonstrate skill in speaking English. Points are also awarded to children from refugee camps or other underprivileged backgrounds.

The programme begins with a two-day orientation at The John F. Kennedy School at Harvard University. There, Dr Leonard Hausman, the director of the Centre for Social and Economic Policy in the Middle East, conducts a seminar with the youngsters. Each of them is asked to speak about the ‘bad things that have happened to the good people they know’. One after another, the youngsters tell tales of friends or even relatives who have been killed in the Arab-Israeli or Bosnian conflict. The stories are harrowing, often producing tears among the participants themselves and from the invited audience.

In the evening a cruise takes the youngsters on a three-hour trip around Boston Harbour. Last summer a folk music group entertained on board.

The aim in these first forty-eight hours together is to strike a balance between the serious emotional baggage the youngsters share and the need to let them get acquainted and begin fostering friendships across national lines.

On their third day in the United States, the one hundred and thirty youngsters travel by bus to Camp Androscoggin in the tiny hamlet of Wayne, Maine. On this neutral playing field, thousands of miles from home, Laith and his Palestinian friends, who for years were accustomed to throwing rocks at their Israeli adversaries, are coached in the new skills of throwing an American baseball and football. The stones they used to hurl at home are used here to establish footholds in the steep climbing wall where an Israeli is taught to hold the rope for a Palestinian and vice versa.

Here, on the shores of a freshwater lake, amid sun-filled days and starry nights, they play tennis and soccer together. They paint their own peace posters. They make beaded jewellery and, of course, swim, dive and learn how to water-ski. And as their two weeks draw to an end, all of the campers cheer wildly for their team-mates on ‘colour war’, the two-day camp-wide Olympics that pits a team of Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians, Moroccans, Egyptians, Serbians and Bosnians wearing ‘black’ tee-shirts against a similar, mixed group of nationalities wearing ‘red’ tee-shirts. There are no gold, silver or bronze medals for these winners. Instead, the victorious team gets to jump in the lake first. The losers have to wait their turn.

Children realizing their potential

Dr Stanley Walzer, a Professor Emeritus of child psychiatry at Harvard University’s Medical School and former Chief of Psychiatry at Children’s Hospital in Boston, observes that it is important to select mid-adolescent teenagers to participate in this programme because

‘the central theme of adolescence is finding an identity, a sense of self, in relation to the world. Although chronic exposure to war may constitute a significant interference with a child’s social development, his or her adaptive capacities may mute the more pronounced effects of the stresses. The Seeds of Peace Programme builds on the natural resiliency of teenagers to overcome adversity and realize their full developmental potentials.’

Walzer, who is the resident psychiatrist at the Seeds of Peace Camp and can often be seen strolling with his arm around a homesick camper, notes that the athletic programme is important because of the ‘central role of athletics in the adolescent development of both boys and girls.’ He explains:

‘Adolescents are physically active and they frequently find themselves in school and community settings tat place a high value on athletics. Sports are a “language” that they all understand; they offer a sense of the familiar in the new and strange environment of the camping situation. Furthermore, they allow the teenagers to participate as members of a team, or individually, on the basis of interests and abilities rather than on political beliefs or ethnic backgrounds. Highly senior coaches are provided to facilitate the development of skills.’

But these daytime activities, which also include an advanced computer programme designed to teach these youngsters how to stay in touch with each other when they return home, set the stage for daily ‘coexistence sessions’ at night. These are the meat and potatoes of the Seeds of Peace Programme and are deliberately scheduled at a time when the youngsters return exhilarated from a full day of sports but are also relaxed enough to share their innermost feelings with others they previously regarded as adversaries. In their own vernacular, they ‘let it all hang out’, opening up to each other and confronting their own fears and prejudices for the first time in their lives. Campers are assigned to ‘coexistence groups’, which include boys and girls from several delegations and are constant for the duration of the camp. Nine different workshops are offered, each one having a different theme, approach and set of activities. One group may head off into the night for a hike into the woods and then be challenged to find their way back. When they return, they discuss the strategies they used: holding hands, singing, cautioning those behind them of the dangers ahead. Another group may participate in an theatre improvisation exercise in which they are asked to resolve racist tensions that erupt between African-Americans and Caucasians in an American ‘inner city’.

Learning the skills of peace

Conducted under the supervision of professional American, Middle Eastern and Balkan facilitators, the sessions focus on teaching the tools of making peace—listening skills, empathy, respect, effective negotiating skills, self confidence and hope. Listening and reason replace shouting and accusation. Walzer notes:

‘The growth of conflict resolution skills has been impressive in the teenagers who participated in the programme for one or two years and then return as “peer support” or as junior counsellors.’

He tells of a group of fifteen adolescents who spontaneously started to argue under a tree near their cabin about the most explosive issue of all, Jerusalem.

‘The interchange rapidly became loud and accusatory, with several children shouting at the same time. A second-year teenager who emerged as the discussion leader produced a ball-point fountain pen from his pocket and introduced the “rule of the pen”. Only the person holding the pen could talk and the others must listen. When another child wished to talk he or she must have the pen in hand. Although the pen received rough treatment as a result of the children’s eagerness to talk, the technique worked. I might add that they arrived at an interesting agreement on how to solve the problem of Jerusalem.’

Explains Executive Director Barbara Gottschalk:

‘The goal of “winning” is usually seen as the main objective in conflicts between people. Yet, what that means is usually subjective and short-sighted. At Seeds of Peace we change the objective from “winning” to “being understood and understanding the other’s point of view”. This short-term objective change makes all the difference in the way people deal with conflict. Each participant has to present his or her side in a non-threatening and forthright was so that the other side can listen non-defensively. The “winners” are those who have made their points understandable to the other side and have been able to understand the arguments presented by the opposing side. The goal is to end with both sides being “winners”. It is the combination of the “team-building” athletic activities, the arts, communal living and the coexistence programmes, all conducted in an atmosphere of acceptance and understanding, that ultimately permits the children to bond and become “seeds of peace”.’

Returning home

The real test, of course, occurs when they return home to their friends and family. The ultimate success of Seeds of Peace depends on how committed these youngsters remain to an agenda that is far more difficult to implement in the slowly changing yet continuing hostile environment at home. Yeyoyoda ‘Yoyo’ Mande’el, an Israeli, recalls that whenever Laith, his new Palestinian friend, visits his Jerusalem home, Yoyo’s father says ‘hello’ but nothing more. ‘My father fought in the 1948 war and in 1956 and 1959. He has no reason to trust them,’ he explains. Laith feels hurt by the silence, particularly since his own father often welcomes Yoyo to their East Jerusalem home, but says softly, “I can understand it’.

Leen El-Wari, a Palestinian girl, says her friends were simply incredulous when she told them about the co-existence sessions. ‘They asked, “What? You sat with Israelis? How did you talk to them and stay in the camp with them?”, Leen says she laughed and told them:

‘My idea before the trip was not to hate someone before knowing them. The Israelis are very nice and friendly people. It isn’t difficult. Just forget for a moment that they are your enemies, and you will be friendly with them.’

Leen admits however that she changed few minds. ‘We talked and talked but I couldn’t change any of their ideas. They need to meet Israeli children and talk with them to understand my point of view.’

Ra’yd Aby Ayyash, a Jordanian boy, agrees that ‘telling people about the camp is not always easy. Some do not want to listen, and for other it is impossible to even talk with a Jew. But I can understand them,’ he says, because

‘that is the way they were raised, and they did not have the chance I had. Still, many listen. Especially my good friends do. They know that judging a person based on nationality or religion is prejudice. Others do not. But I will never give up the mission that my heart found best to follow.’

Pioneers for peace

Perhaps the most important lessons that Seeds of Peace has taught everyone, children and adults alike, is never to underestimate what a human being, regardless of his or her age, is capable of. When the delegations arrive, I tell them on their first day in the country hat each of them is like Charles Lindbergh or Amelia Earhart. They are pioneers on a course that few have been privileged to travel before: the first of their generation who have been given the opportunity to make peace with those their parents, school systems, media and societies have condemned as ‘enemies’. I also tell each of them that I expect that among the more than three hundred Seeds of Peace graduates are the future presidents and prime ministers of the Middle East and the Balkans.

So far, they have vindicated my dreams. In February 1994, when more than two dozen Arabs were brutally murdered by a Jewish fanatic while they were praying in the mosque at Hebron, our youngsters drafted a two-page letter to both Rabin and Arafat calling on them to redouble their peace efforts and never give in to terrorism of any kind. A few weeks later, a group of Israeli youngsters invited Ruba, a Palestinian girl from Jericho, to visit Ein Kerem, a suburb of Jerusalem, so she could see the house where her father was born. He had not been allowed to return since leaving in 1948 and thus had never had the opportunity to show Ruba the town and home where he spent his own childhood. The Israelis took Ruba and a few of her friends to visit Ein Kerem and amid a few tears and much laughter went back to one of the Israeli’s homes for dinner.

Peace between peoples

But my favourite story is the one about another Israeli who was invited by his Palestinian friend to see Jericho, the first area in the West Bank from which Israeli troops withdrew and turned over to the Palestinian Authority. The father of the Palestinian, who was driving the two of them through Jericho, was stopped by the Palestinian police. They were suspicious that an Israeli might be up to something. Rolling down the window, the father told the policemen not to worry. ‘I’m just showing Jericho to my two sons,’ he said.

The Bible says that ‘The wolf shall live with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and the little child shall lead them.’ Perhaps that is the most important lesson of all: after all these years, the emotional and moral power of children can still be harnessed to point the way for adults. In September 1994, Tamer Nagy, an Egyptian member of the original group of forty-six youngsters who has returned for the last two years as ‘peer support’ and as a junior counsellor, presented President Clinton with a memento on behalf of all the youngsters who have graduated from Seeds of Peace. He told the President eloquently, “peace between people is more important than peace between governments.’ It was a line that both Clinton and Vice President Al Gore subsequently incorporated into their own speeches.

On a recent trip to Jerusalem, Secretary of State Warren Christopher even took time out of his busy schedule to meet with Laith and Yoyo. When the second Israeli-Palestinian accord was signed in the East Room of the White House in September 1995, Christopher remembered that encounter. ‘Three months ago in Jerusalem and again three weeks ago in Washington, I met with Israeli and Arab children who spent the summer together in a programme called Seeds of Peace,’ he said, as Arafat and Rabin were about to sign the new agreement. Behind them stood Jordan’s King Hussein, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and President Clinton. ‘By developing new friendships, they are demolishing old prejudices,’ Christopher told them. ‘By reaching across communities, they are resolving a conflict that for too long has divided their peoples. It is their spirit that brings us here today. Their lives. Their dreams. Their future. Let us not betray them.’

Remarks of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to Seeds of Peace

Aug 14, 2001 / No Comments

Thank you very much, John. It was wonderful to be serenaded by these great kids. I want you all to know that you sound an awful lot better than I did when I sang in Asia last month …

Welcome The Department of State. I want to congratulate all 160 campers—Palestinians, Jordanians, Israelis, Israeli Arabs, Egyptians, Tunisians, Qataris, Greek Cypriots, Turkish Cypriots, Macedonians, Kosovars, and Yugoslavians. And my thanks also to the other VIPs here—the assembled Ambassadors, colleagues, friends of Seeds of Peace, Bobbie, Tim and Lindsay.

What is happening now in the Middle East makes what you are doing all the more important. Since its inception, you and your predecessors in Seeds have helped us understand that peace is possible. If only we can end the violence. If only we can break down the barriers of hatred and distrust.

In your anthem you just sand: “We stand hand-in-hand as we watch the bricks fall. We’ve learned from the past and fear not what’s ahead.”

That’s very good. I like that. And I commend you for your courage and for daring to believe that, no matter how bad at times things can get, a bright future still is possible.

The horrors of this past week only serve to remind us why peace is so urgent. Your lives and the lives of your generation are far too precious to be wasted on perpetuating hate and endless conflict.

Seeds of Peace not only inspires hope—Seeds of Peace creates hope. You are among the best and brightest of your generation. You have dedicated yourselves to work for peace. To speak for peace even when the voices of hate and violence and vengeance shout all around you.

Your experiences in Seeds give real content to what peace between peoples can really mean in practice. Seeds has equipped you with the skills and tools to listen not preach, to teach not lecture. Most important of all, it has shown you how to share what you have felt and learned with others.

Looking at all of you, it is easier for me and others of my generation to envision a Cyprus, a Middle East, and a Balkans free of conflict. To envision that a web of personal and economic ties will one day replace mistrust and misunderstanding. To envision a time where friendships such as those you have made as Seeds are the norm and not the exception. Where young people of different ethnic backgrounds can grow up to be good neighbors.

Like each of you, Asel Asleh was a Seeds of Peace. He lost his life last October, but he remains an enduring symbol of Hope. He embodied the Seeds’ ideals of promoting understanding and peaceful coexistence. Asel was a sensitive, caring, articulate young leader fighting the legacy of hatred to build a brighter future for Arabs and Israelis alike.

Tragically, he did not live to see the future he dreamed of, but each and every one of you must carry on for him, inspired by his memory, so that you will help create the future he wanted so much to be a part of.

Like all of you, President Bush believes, and I believe, that Asel Asleh’s vision is attainable. Not just a wonderful dream. And like you, we will keep working hard at peace.

President Bush and I, and all the people in this room who are dedicated to the principles of Seeds, will continue to do everything we can to ensure that your future will be different. That your world will be better. That your lives will be free of fear and full of opportunity.

Seeds is making a difference—one day at a time, one person at a time, one mind at a time, one heart at a time. You are terrific and I want to thank each and every on of you for what you are doing. I am honored to be a part of your outstanding program.

And now, I will be glad to answer some questions. And if I don’t get the time to answer every one now, I know that Aaron Miller will be on hand to field some more later in the program.

Sowing seeds of peace in nice kids
The Day (Connecticut)

Aug 25, 2002 / No Comments

We on the shores have torn down walls;
We stand hand in hand as we watch the bricks fall.
We’ve learned from the past and fear not what’s ahead;
I now I’ll not walk alone, but with a friend instead.
– from “I am a Seed of Peace”

I first learned about Seeds of Peace in articles in The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and on the television show “60 Minutes.” The more I heard about this world-wide organization, the more curious I became. I was fascinated with the idea of bringing children together from warring cultures and then “replanting” them in their societies to try to grow peace. I had to see for myself, so in July my husband and I visited the camp.

Each summer, hundreds of teenagers spend a month at a summer camp in Maine, living side-by-side with people they have been led to by their upbringing to hate. Founded in 1993 by the late author and journalist John Wallach, Seeds of Peace now is recognized as the leading international conflict resolution program for youth. From 46 Israeli, Palestinian, and Egyptian teenagers in 1993, the organization now conducts extensive year-round coexistence programs and has more than 2,000 graduates representing 22 nations.

Growing up, I always had been drawn to people of different ethnic backgrounds. I loved learning about world affairs, social problems and civic virtue. In the 1960s I was caught up in the struggle of civil rights. I remember my husband and I going to Boston to hear Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speak. The world was changing, and I believed becoming a better place. Seeds of Peace appealed to my sense of optimism. Being a Jew, I was also attracted by the hope it raised for the possibility of peace in the Middle East.

The very site evokes the sentiment of peace. It is situated in a pine forest on beautiful Pleasant Lake in Otisfield, Me. The wind whistles through the trees. The air is filled with the aroma of pine needles. There, these children of distant wars engage in soccer, canoeing, swimming, sailing, cricket, basketball, tennis and arts. This year, the campers created a float for the local July 4 parade.

Yaakov Sadan, 17, is an Israeli Jew. Dark-haired and handsome, he was spending his third year at the camp and this year returned as a counselor.

Yassin Fayed Ghoz, 15, from Cairo, Egypt told me his dad runs a business back home. He is fascinated by computer science. He said the camp has opened his eyes. He has learned that each camper is a human being and has similar feelings. He said, “Sometimes people see peace with their own eyes, but do not admit it.” In speaking of the Mideast war he said he supports “the truth.” He was hesitant to speak further.

Sara Abuhijleh is a 16-year old Palestinian from Jerusalem. She told me her favorite subject is history and she is in the 11th grade. She has four sisters and her father is a professor in Birzeit. She emphasized, “My family wants peace. It is the governments who want war, not the people.” She was delightful to talk with, and at the end of the day hugged me and said, “You remind me of my grandmother.” I was touched.

For two hours I sat in on a session on coexistence. Emotions were so strong the room was electrified when they talked about conflicts and politics in their own countries. One Palestinian stated it was not right that they do no have a state of their own. He was angry. His eyes blazed and he confronted his Jewish friend who sat next to him. His Jewish friend stood up and shouted, “Your country has to learn to be responsible and have a credible leader. Arafat is not trustworthy.”

Another said, “You and I are human beings. We and our families have to learn to live side by side.”

Yet another said, “Israeli troops are everywhere. I don’t want to feel safe by having 20 Israeli soldiers around me. I want to feel safe in a free atmosphere.”

An Egyptian boy stated, “Intifada happens in many countries when that country has been oppressed—even in the U.S.” He was referring to civil rights.

At the conclusion of the session, one Palestinian girl said, “I learned new things. I had a chance to listen to the other side.”

From a Jewish boy from Tel Aviv: “We understand each other better. Arguments came up, but we still respected each other.” The two counselors who led this session felt many good things had come about from all the emotion and opinions expressed. At the end of the session individuals teamed up into couples, each couple deciding to swim together or take part in another activity.

One of the most vivid memories of my visit is when the entire group of campers sat in a huge circle, arms around each other, all wearing green Seeds of Peace T-shirts, and sang the signature song of the camp. Its refrain was:

I am a Seed of Peace, a Seed of Peace, a Seed of Peace
I am a Seed, a Seed of Peace,
I am a Seed, I am a Seed of Peace.
Peace, peace, peace, peace

The question arises: Once these “Seeds” return to their own countries and eventually are called to serve in the Army, will they be the same? Will they be the same Edi or Tzachi that all the campers knew at summer camp? That is an answer that only time can provide. But until then, I have the deepest faith in these kids. Asel Asleh was a strong Palestinian and a friend to dozens of Israelis. He was a proud Muslim who learned at Christian schools and visited Jewish friends on their holidays. He worked for peace, and stood for his rights without hurting anyone. He was a Seed who was so loved at camp.

Sadly, he returned to Israel in 2000 and was one of those killed. He wrote while at camp, “Out beyond ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. Until we meet in the field, my friend, take care.”

At the end of the day I felt wonderful. I had grown and learned so much. I continue to believe in Israel and all it stands for. I also believe the Palestinians should have a homeland they can call their own. I urge anyone who has the chance to visit Seeds of Peace. As United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said, “There can be no more important initiative than bringing together young people who have seen the ravages of war to learn the art of peace. Seeds of Peace certainly is an example of the world the United Nations is actively working for.”

Claudia Shapiro lives in Waterford.

Seeds of Peace offers course in Dialogue Facilitation and Conflict Transformation

Sep 3, 2011 / No Comments

JERUSALEM | Seeds of Peace is offering its third year-long intensive training course in dialogue facilitation and conflict transformation, designed to provide professional peace-building skills and opportunities, for a select group of 20 Israelis and Palestinians beginning this fall.

Despite its significant value and need, peace-building is still a nascent professional field in Israel and Palestine. The Seeds of Peace course is designed as a meaningful introduction to dialogue facilitation and conflict transformation that can serve as a foundation for professional work in the field.  Within five years, Seeds of Peace aims to have trained more than 150 Israelis and Palestinians that can form the base of a growing industry of conflict resolution professionals.

The course meets twice monthly in Jerusalem, over a period of nine months from October 2011 to July 2012. While participants gain a theoretical understanding of dialogue facilitation and conflict transformation, the Seeds of Peace course is unique in its emphasis on experiential learning and practice. Israeli and Palestinian participants go through their own dialogue experience, and facilitate dialogue within their group, in order to confront and contend with their own personal and political perspectives. Through the training process, the group forms interpersonal relationships and a deeper understanding of ‘the other side’ that, combined with practical skills-training, enables them to be exceptionally effective peace-building professionals.

Course participants are required to provide 40 hours of dialogue facilitation for local Seeds of Peace programs as part of their field experience. At the end of the nine months, a select group of the most talented facilitators will have the opportunity to lead dialogue sessions at the Seeds of Peace Camp.

Seed Stories: Advancing horizontally and saving the world

Mar 26, 2019 / No Comments

Right as I was finishing university, the global economic crisis of 2009 was in full blow. I applied for various jobs, from post-graduate university teaching positions to translating technical and/or scientific articles.

I was even waitressing early morning shifts in a local bar in Zagreb, Croatia. However, all were either substitute or short-term positions. So gradually, I started applying for jobs on an international level.

I got an internship at Energy Changes, a consulting company based in Vienna, Austria. Since I graduated from Faculty of Natural Sciences with majors in physics and chemistry, the field of energy efficiency and clean development, which was the main focus of the company, seemed like a fit. During that time, the company was divided into two branches: Global and Regional (Austria-Hungary). I was interning for the Global office and, some of my duties included monitoring international tendering processes, entering projects into the database, and preparing senior consultants for onsite work. I really thought we were helping to save the world.

Everything would be fine, and I would probably still be working, maybe not in that company, but in the field, if it weren’t for two crucial things:

1. By following the tendering, I soon came to realize that some financiers were offering support more in favor of traditional solutions, rather than to clean development and energy efficiency projects. Oh, and by the way: through tendering one can get a grasp of how the monetary support is divided and organized throughout the world, and it’s not a nice picture for someone as idealistic as I was at the time.

2. The final blow was the implosion of The Kyoto Agreement, which expired by the end of 2012. Despite the Doha Amendment, signed by 2013, the international CDM-stock market (clean development mechanism) imploded, and small consulting companies struggled to even survive. The company where I worked, for example, was reduced to Regional level in just six months.

I have to say I was left disappointed, but that grew to disgust after the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015. It was shocking to see how global memory lasts for five years at the most. Personally, it felt like someone just reset the board for new players of this grown-up Monopoly game. Maybe I’m a bit harsh, because no one can take away the self-sustainable water cleaning systems set up in central Africa, or the photovoltaic advancements made in Dubai projects, but it all kind of discouraged me from pursuing a career in that field.

Soon after, I got a teaching job in one of the most respected high schools in Zagreb. At first, I thought this would be an in-between job until I figured out what I wanted to do with my life. I am happy to say that I am still working there and I love it. I teach high school physics and chemistry in Croatian, but also in a German-Croatian bilingual program, to 14-18 year olds. In contrast to consulting, I find working with teenagers more rewarding.

I feel like some effects of my work are immediate and instantly recognizable (like the “aha moment” you get after simplifying a problem), and some become evident a few years after students graduate. I have a sense of pride when I get my students to think critically and express their confusion or dislike of something, but are still able to maintain a good discussion, and respect for others participating. What is also endearing is to hear from students how you helped them to choose a certain path in life.

Being a teacher in this day and age, even in an underdeveloped Croatia, offers so much more than regurgitating the same material for different classes. Now, we can develop and participate in a lot of international student exchange and cooperation projects. My experience in consulting really comes in handy as it relates to proposal preparations, asking for financial support, and evaluation. By letting students participate in such tasks, it can help them get an insight of how the bureaucratic side of successful projects works. Some end up choosing that as a career path, others are at least made aware of the process.

By interacting with young adults just as they set off in the world, it’s interesting to see how much and how little things change from one generation to another. I am hopeful I have reached at least some of my students, and that they will affect others and further expand the network. By doing so I’ve begun to regard teaching as one of the most important and rewarding career paths offered.

I really do think that the experience at Seeds of Peace showed me how productive a group can be once trust is established, as well as some tools of mediating that I started unconsciously using while conducting my classes. Being a Seed also determined what I value in life. Being able to communicate the importance of mutual understanding and respect in conflict resolution, and ultimately achieving and maintaining peaceful coexistence, keeps me going. I may never see that dream come true, but having met so many wonderful people from so many different cultures and conflicts, I believe it is possible. It just demands perseverance and determination.

So instead of working in consulting and traveling the world while simultaneously saving it, I now have a job where I can do exactly that and so much more. Instead of advancing vertically through society, I am now advancing horizontally, by creating student/teacher networks, similar to Seeds of Peace, for quick and reliable exchange of information.

US House of Representatives honors Seeds of Peace
C-SPAN

Jun 10, 2008 / No Comments

WASHINGTON, DC | Mr. DONALD PAYNE (D-NJ): Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this resolution and yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H. Con. Res. 337, a resolution honoring Seeds of Peace for its 15th anniversary as an organization promoting tolerance and peaceful coexistence in the Middle East and around the world.

While the peace process has had its ups and downs over the last 15 years, Seeds of Peace has blossomed into a widely recognized organization that has facilitated interaction among thousands of young people and young leaders and educators from all around the world.

Seeds of Peace lays a foundation for sustainable peace by promoting dialogue among young leaders before their fears, mistrust and inherited prejudices have permanently shaped their vision of their enemy. We get them in time to prevent that from happening.

After a summer program in Maine, which also includes many American participants, these young seeds, as they are known, and their teachers, continue with regional and international programming that furthers the dialogue among and across nationalities and supports the development of future leaders. Seeds of Peace also fulfills an important recommendation of the 9/11 Commission, reaching out to young people, particularly in Arab and other Muslim countries, and offering them hope and a positive vision of the future.

C-Span; Text From the Congressional Record
Payne, Donald [D-NJ]. Debate: H.CON.RES.337
Begin: 14:22:51 End: 14:25:53 (Length: 00:03:02)

Ramy Nagy: Empowering Leaders at the Grassroots Level
Elan

Mar 15, 2012 / No Comments

By Moniza Khokhar, in partnership with Seeds of Peace | Ramy Nagy, is an emerging leader that understands the requirement to adapt, lead and influence people towards a common goal. As a member of the Young Leadership Committee’s Board of Directors for Seeds of Peace, Ramy co-chairs significant fundraising and awareness initiatives, works with other board members and YLC members on growing the YLC through expertise and volunteerism. Ramy also founded Beena, which is a platform for inspiring projects that encourage participation, innovation and making a difference in the world. Beena means “by us” as in “made by us” in Egyptian colloquial Arabic. Ramy took his experiences with and then created MADEO, which is a unique branding and design firm that has been helping clients since 2006 in the Middle East and the United States. We got a chance to speak to him.

Elan: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself professionally?

RN: I have always been passionate about human-centered design and its ability to drive change. This passion shaped my career so far, which always focused on trying to help companies and organizations grow successfully through design thinking. I worked in New York and Hollywood at a number of film and marketing firms, which shaped my view on the importance of multidisciplinary teamwork for creating innovative projects. I worked on the creative development teams responsible for marketing strategies for clients such as Warner Brothers, Disney and Universal Studios. After directing video, design and branding projects, I founded MADEO a creative firm with teams in Cairo and New York. MADEO’s collaborative multidisciplinary teams work to design and produce human-centered brands, ideas, ads, websites, brochures, videos, films, events, new forms of experiences and sometimes even entirely new businesses for our clients.

Elan: You founded the Beena Project. Tell us about it.

RN: Beena means “by us” as in “made by us” in Egyptian colloquial. Beena was inspired by the positive collaborations that made the Egyptian peaceful revolution a role model in participation and collaboration for social change. We believe that collaborating is much better than succeeding alone. Beena is the place to explore innovative collaborations from around the world in art, business, culture, design, technology and other things that push our days forward.

Beena was founded in 2011, but is made possible by daily collaborative teams working around the clock to make Beena something special. Beena is more than a website. There are BeenaTalks and other interesting things we’re making to push innovative collaborations forward.

Elan: Why was it so important to provide a platform like Beena at a time like this?

RN: I started Beena the same day that Mubarak stepped down. I had a feeling that what will come next will be an overwhelming amount of news everyday about political changes in the country, which a year later seems to be still the case, and with that, I didn’t want to lose sight of the innovative projects that are coming out. I wanted to a way to share these projects with other people to be inspired and I wanted space for them to know that these kind of projects can be important and not everything will have to be about politics or make big headlines to matter.

Elan: As someone who is well connected with the Egyptian youth and work with them closely, what are some lessons that you hope to get across to the future leaders of Egypt?

RN: The future leaders of Egypt are today’s youth; maybe not in the coming election, but ultimately it is today’s young leaders that will be in positions of power in the coming years. The one message that I would care to get across is that the more we collaborate with other countries, communities and a diverse group of people the faster we will innovate, be influenced and influence others in the world.

Elan: What is one of the greatest challenges you’ve had to face as an entrepreneur and activist?

RN: The greatest challenge for me as an entrepreneur is sustaining an idea, as a project through months of ups and downs in the country and for the people working on it. A great idea is always easy to start, but gets very challenging to sustain, without losing sight of what was great about it from the first place.

Read the interview at Elan »