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Jordanian Seeds take a deep look at their country’s elections

Nov 18, 2020 / No Comments

AMMAN | On November 10, a historically small percentage of Jordanians—just 30 percent—cast their votes in the country’s election, but Seeds were watching.

The day after the election, Jordanian Seeds gathered via Zoom to reflect on the election, analyzing the process and political system: from voter apathy to how real change occurs.

Traditionally, elections in Jordan have been greeted with moderate enthusiasm. The coronavirus did little to encourage voters, with campaigns on social media calling to postpone the election as infections grew exponentially in the months leading up to Election Day.

Candidates moved their campaigns online, but the date was not changed. Seeds discussed how the Covid-19 outbreak might have contributed to the apparent voter apathy, but explored other possible culprits: Whether the electoral law meets the aspirations of Jordanians, and whether it encourages youth involvement in decision making; as well as the weakness of the current political parties to form a true opposition that would force the governments to reform the electoral law, and the different reasons behind that weakness.

Seeds also examined many storylines that surfaced during and after the elections—especially the fundamental relationship between state and citizens, and each group’s rights and duties.

They pointed out how this relationship is “functioning” relatively well in large cities where most of the public spending is poured, yet it is clearly dysfunctional in peripheral areas where the state has withdrawn from its traditional role in development of the most marginalized areas.

This all led the Seeds to examine a question that confronts many young leaders: If you want to create a more just and inclusive society, is it better to becoming a part of the system and work to change it from the inside, or are other community ventures more effective?

Whatever path they choose, Seeds of Peace Jordanian Programs Director Farah Bdour said, these Seeds demonstrated that they are ready for the challenge.

As one participating Seed put it: “I will encourage my friends to answer one question: If it’s not us who will lead the change, then who will do that? It’s our future and we need to build it our way.”

Learn more about our Middle East programs ››

Seeds of Peace launches pioneering program for Indian university educators

Feb 12, 2021 / No Comments

MUMBAI | Over the last 20 years Seeds of Peace has conducted dozens of programs, workshops, and camps in India, providing hundreds of India’s youth and educators with the skills and resources to work across lines of difference and lead change in their schools, workplaces and communities.

This year, Seeds of Peace India, with the support of the U.S. Consulate, Mumbai, is proud to announce that it will be empowering even more educators through The Samvaad Project, a new interfaith dialogue facilitation training program.

While different faith communities have coexisted in India for centuries, a systematic engagement with interfaith work is fairly new for the country. In such times where religious differences are a reason for constant social upheaval and strife, we believe that there is an urgent need to train a new set of leaders in tackling the problem of interfaith conflict.

“A person does not have to be religious to understand the ways in which faith and closely held beliefs impact the way communities interact, function, and are governed,” said Joshua Thomas, Seeds of Peace Executive Director. “At a time when people around the world are increasingly feeling the effects of polarization, university educators are in a unique position to create spaces where students and community members can safely engage in dialogue that builds more peaceful societies, rather than tears them apart.”

Led by experts in conflict resolution and peacebuilding, The Samvaad Project will equip participants with necessary knowledge and skills to facilitate dialogue and create safe spaces for students and community members, thus helping them break cycles of fear and hate by promoting co-existence and peaceful exchange of ideas through dialogue.

The program is set to take place April through October, and will include a six-day, in-person residency, along with online training. All college and university-level educators in Western India are invited to apply for the program at seedsofpeace.org/samvaad. The application deadline is February 28, 2021.

For more information, please review the program brochure or email Senior Program Coordinator Urmi Chanda at uchanda@seedsofpeace.org.

Leader Focus: Meet Rukmini, a Samvaad Trainer

Feb 23, 2021 / No Comments

When Rukmini was a young girl growing up in Mumbai, she mostly thought of the word “peace” in the context of beauty queens and would-be saints: Miss Universe talked about the need for it, Mother Teresa gave up everything for it, but what, Rukmini wondered, “did that mean for someone like me, a lay person who has conflict at home?”

Her personal inquiry deepened with time, leading her through several peacebuilding programs in high school and, eventually, to college where she attended an interfaith dialogue session hosted by a Buddhist group. What she experienced there, she said, left her “awestruck.”

“I came from a family where my parents are extremely religious and caste-ist, and I knew I wanted to fight that but didn’t know how to in terms of having the emotional and psychological safety to voice that at home,” she said. “So to me, it was such a relief to learn that these spaces can exist that can allow for processing and talking about my own faith (or lack thereof).”

Having built a career in peacebuilding and corporate leadership development, Rukmini has actively practiced dialogue for most of the past decade—including as a Seeds of Peace Delegation Leader and Educator, and this spring, she’ll be one of four trainers leading The Samvaad Project, a new Seeds of Peace interfaith-dialogue facilitation training program for university educators in Western India. She has seen what happens when people have safe spaces to explore their beliefs and differences, and sees dialogue, particularly for young people, as a critical ingredient in building peace.

“In the world we live in, I don’t think it’s an option any longer,” she said of dialogue. “It’s essential.”

She spoke recently about The Samvaad Project and how educators can play a key role in providing safe spaces for youth to explore their beliefs through dialogue, just as she did as a student.

Seeds of Peace: It seems you were thinking about peace and conflict from an early age. How did that translate into action for you?

Rukmini: It’s all about context, right? When I was growing up, Mumbai was filled with gang wars and there was a lot of violence. I remember once, I was probably 21 or 22, I was on a train and there was a bomb blast in another compartment. The train halted, we all quietly jumped off the train, and calmly walked to the next station. While I moved on that day, there was something wrong about it in terms of, how can we just go on?

Those kinds of experiences intensified this relationship with conflict—that something about it doesn’t make sense and we need to work at it. And when I say “we” need to work at it, I mean common people. It can’t be something just left to governments or UN agencies. We need to have lay people working on conflict resolution.

What role do you see educators playing in creating cultures of peace?

Adolescence or early adulthood is when people are thinking about the kind of impact they want on the world, and I think it’s the right time for us to introduce people to personal responsibility towards the collective and how they can contribute to peacebuilding.

And peacebuilding is something that can be integrated into pretty much everything one does—into law, government-related work, design and architecture—it’s a way of life, and a way of sensitizing us to the fact that conflict exists in us and around us. If you’re able to integrate that concept early in our lives, then there isn’t as much resistance to it later in life, when one is faced with conflicts.

Given the kind of influence that educators have and the opportunity that they have to create conversational spaces in their institutions and in their communities, there’s so much that can be done. There aren’t enough safe spaces to talk about faith at the moment, so even if you’re able to even marginally increase the amount of safety, that will be work well done.

How does interfaith dialogue contribute to lasting peace? Can it be achieved without it?

Dialogue—interfaith or otherwise—is crucial. There are so many divisive elements all around, online and offline, and the only way to counteract that is dialogue: to sit across and talk about what’s your story, what’s my story, and how do we build our collective story and a shared future.

Why was this important to be centered specifically on interfaith dialogue?

First, because of the times that we live in, there’s a lot of propaganda around faith in every form. Second, because a lot of elements of faith are so unconscious to us. And because we’re often not really aware of the privileges we carry, we sometimes mete out unfairness without knowing it. So it’s really important to bring that into conscious awareness and start working with it, otherwise we end up perpetuating structural violence without even knowing it.

What if a person is not religious, will this course be useful to them?

Yes, that’s also an aspect of faith. If I’m agnostic or an atheist, that’s still my faith, and I still need to live in my community, family, my society where people may practice other forms of faith and they may want to be respected for their expression of it. And so my being non-religious may have an impact on them just by being what I am. At the end of the day, the fact that we are human and belong in society is reason enough for someone to do this work.

What can participants expect from the program?

There’s definitely a skills component in terms of how to facilitate dialogue, to handle sensitive conversations, to manage it when things get heated up, and so on. But a lot of the work is also inner work, which will definitely take participants outside their comfort zone, and that’s also the intention—that as educators, we need to live the process to be able to educate others around it.

It’s not always comfortable, but I would still say it’s rewarding because you see changes—particularly when you work with young people. You see how their world view changes and how much more expansive they become as a result of dialogue, and that’s worth everything.

What do you hope people will do with this course?

I hope they generate conversations around faith in a safe way, wherever they are. Even if they generate one question or reflection in their inner circle, that’s good enough impact for me.

Learn more about the Samvaad Project or submit an application ››

Rukmini is a seasoned leadership development facilitator, coach, and peacebuilder with over 19 years of professional experience around the world. She is certified to use a wide variety of approaches, including conscious and unconscious human process work, whole systems thinking, Appreciative Inquiry, Non-Violent Communication, and Neuro Linguistic Programming. As a Rotary Peace Fellow, Rukmini is a trained peacebuilder and conflict resolution specialist and channels her work in this area through her peacebuilding platform The Womb Tales. She has a Professional Development Certificate in Peace and Conflict Resolution from Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, and a Master’s degrees in Organizational Psychology and Bachelor’s degree in Commerce from the Mumbai University. Her publications include ‘A Culturally Sensitive Approach to Engage Contemporary Corporate India.

For 130 new Seeds, Camp is just the beginning

Sep 21, 2021 / No Comments

OTISFIELD, MAINE | Over 130 youth from across the Northeast United States participated in the 2021 Seeds of Peace Camp, marking a much-anticipated return to the shores of Pleasant Lake in Maine after a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic.

And while it was a summer that was unprecedented in the nature of its obstacles, it also showed, now more than ever, the need to empower youth to work across lines of difference and lead change in their communities.

“We knew from early on that this summer would hold myriad challenges brought on by COVID-19,” said Sarah Stone, (a.k.a. Stoney) who served as Camp co-director alongside Spencer Traylor (2008 Maine Seed) and worked with a team of Camp leads hailing from across the Northeast.

“But youth and staff showed up ready to work across lines of difference with brilliance, compassion, and courage. There was so much beauty in their ability to share space and create a strong community rooted in care and in action, despite all the uncertainty and fear in the world right now.”
The summer kicked off in July with a two-and-a-half-week session for campers from across the Northeast U.S., followed by another session in August for only youth from Maine.

Closely monitoring ever-evolving CDC guidelines and following advice from public health consultants, a decision was made early in 2021 that only youth from within driving distance of Camp would be eligible this summer—meaning that for the first time in Seeds of Peace Camp history, there would be no international campers.
Instead, youth at Camp—and in all countries where Seeds of Peace works—began their Seeds journey by engaging in dialogue over issues within their own communities and countries, rather than focusing largely on cross-border conflicts.

For campers, it provided a much needed opportunity to discuss divides within the United States, with dialogue sessions tackling topics like religion, socioeconomic status, race, and political affiliation.

After a year full of political unrest, violence, and deepening societal divides, there was plenty for youth to dig into. But after a year that also wrought a heavy toll on mental health and greatly restricted opportunities for in-person social interaction, Camp staff also had to be mindful of when campers’ comfort zones might be overstretched.

“With so many schools hybrid or fully remote, youth’s social lives and interactions were mostly curated by themselves online and they hadn’t been re-accustomed to engaging with one another outside of this context,” Stoney said.

“At Camp, we did a lot of work to learn to see and hear one another not with the distance or wall of Facebook statuses or TikTok videos, but up close and personal, truly listening, unlearning, learning.”

The expectation for dialogue, of course, has always been that Seeds would apply those experiences to take action for change in their schools and communities. This year, however, a series of workshops that prepared students to do just that were baked into Camp programming. Initiated and designed by Stoney, Community Action challenged campers to work together to identify and prepare to address issues they want to change back home.

As Danielle Whyte, a 2019 Maine Seed and Co-Leader of Community Action, described it: “Community Action is the art of amplifying the voice of the collective.”
Grouped with campers from their hometowns, youth created action plans to bring anti-racist curricula to their schools, hire more diverse faculty and staff, and build school decision-making structures that are more inclusive of student voices, to name a few. For Cayen, a Seed from Maine, it was an opportunity to return home with “concrete, realistic” plans for change.

“I feel that Community Action allows me to be reassured, organized, inspired and ecstatic that my fellow peers and I have a solid chance at bringing positive and undeniable change in myself and my community,” Cayen reflected in a Camper Report. “Community Action provides a plan, a way to enact the plan, confidence that the plan will work, and a purpose.”

The focus on youth-led action underscored many of the summer’s new additions and highlights—from camper reports in which youth shared their first-hand perspectives, to youth-led special activities, to daily inspirations provided by a different bunk at each morning lineup.

Writing in one of the reports, Faysal, a camper from Maine, said he had come to “expect the unexpected” at Camp.

Whether it was trying a new activity for the first time or having the opportunity to branch out of their groups and meet new friends at Café Night, campers explored their capabilities and how these strengths might add to the greater good of their communities.

“Seeds of Peace is an opportunity for you to find yourself in a place where you can be yourself,” Faysal wrote. “There needs to be change in the world, and here is where that starts.”

A magazine by and for teens: How one Seed is spreading empathy through the written word

Jul 27, 2020 / No Comments

A digital space where teenagers can have a platform of their own; where they can fully realize their ability to create empathy and connect lives across real and imagined boundaries: This is Crossed Paths magazine.

Inspired by her time at the Seeds of Peace Camp and a love for writing, Saya, a 2019 New York City Seed, created the online literary magazine earlier this year with the belief “that dialogue and personal storytelling have the power to bring people together and encourage empathy,” she said.

“Since I couldn’t stay at Seeds forever, I decided to bring the storytelling to a digital space, and thus began Crossed Paths!”

Written and edited entirely by teenagers, the magazine is a space to share stories that resonate with young people, including topics like race, gender, sexuality, and religion.

The first edition, which was themed “Identity,” paired polished artwork with poems and deeply personal reflections about issues such as the pressures of growing up, intersectionality in America, and white women’s dehumanizing obsession with a young Black girl’s hair.

The goal, Saya said, is as the magazine’s name implies: “For our readers and writers to cross paths with new perspectives and stories, hopefully inspiring newfound empathy.”

“We all live in some sort of bubble,” she said, “and the primary purpose of Crossed Paths is to break out of that bubble.”

Crossed Paths is currently accepting submissions from writers and artists for their second issue, which is themed “resilience,” with a deadline of August 1. More information is available at crossedpaths.org.

Seeds of Peace launches #ChangeTakesAllofUs

Jul 20, 2020 / No Comments

NEW YORK | Change comes in many packages: It’s an Afghan teacher using education to upend generational cycles of poverty, a young Black woman organizing for racial justice in the whitest state in America, and a Palestinian doctor fighting to ensure that all patients receive equal care.

This week, we are bringing you the voices of a unique tapestry of changemakers through #ChangeTakesAllofUs, a social media campaign featuring Seeds, Fellows, Educators, and staff members as they re-imagine approaches to the world’s most pressing issues.

These are voices not just from dreamers, but from doers: people who are working in the fields of health care, education, social justice, law, politics, journalism, the arts, and NGOs to build more free and inclusive systems in their corners of the world. History shows us that social change happens when leaders with various strategies and values work across all sectors of societies to challenge, reimagine, and rebuild current systems.

Across political, economic, generational, and cultural divides, the voices we’ll share will demonstrate that #ChangeTakesAllofUs, and that it also takes you.

Throughout this campaign we’ll offer opportunities to sign up for virtual discussions with our alumni, engage with changemakers, share your story, and learn about ways you can support or join Seeds of Peace programs.

View the #ChangeTakesAllofUs campaign

Health care first responders | Education | Refugees & Migrants | Pandemic Community Responders

 

Seed Stories: Remembering Asel Asleh

Oct 3, 2019 / No Comments

Martin Luther King Jr. once said that “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

This quote means so much to all people living under oppression—to people in need of recognition, help, and support to overcome injustices that suffocate all that is good.

Friends of the oppressed should never be silent. They should always lend a voice to the oppressed, because on this journey to freedom and justice, we can’t walk alone. We can’t survive without true camaraderie that knows how to speak the truth and seeks peace for all.

Nineteen years ago, the Asleh family from Arrabeh, the Palestinian town inside the Green Line, lost a pure soul, a son, and a pioneer named Asel.

They were not the only ones to feel the loss and that pain: many of Asel’s friends from different circles, including Seeds of Peace, still miss him and commemorate October 2nd as the day a beautiful human soul was taken.

Asel was murdered by Israeli police in his hometown as they brutally suppressed demonstrations that were taking place on both sides of the Green Line. These protests were a reaction to the massive response by the Israeli military against demonstrations in the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem that broke out as a result of the provocative visit by Ariel Sharon to the Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem. Sharon was the head of the Israeli opposition in the Knesset and was running to become Israeli prime minister.

These demonstrations are known today as the start of Second Intifada. The Israeli military response to them left thousands of Palestinians dead; the Palestinian retaliation took hundreds of Israeli lives. Inside the Green Line, 13 Palestinian citizens of Israel were killed by Israeli police and border police during demonstrations.

Our beloved Asel was one of these 13, one of the too many lives lost in this cruel reality in which we live.

Asel was shot at short range while he was wearing his green Seeds of Peace t-shirt. He was there because he believed in justice, in peace, in acting against oppression, and because he believed in humanity.

To date, no one has been held accountable for his killing, despite evidence of who shot him and who gave the orders to do so.

Asel represented all that is good in this world. He touched the souls of so many while he was with us and the souls of many more who only met him through hearing his story and the details of his peaceful life and genuine heart. He managed to build relationships with enemies and with people he never knew before—to connect with everyone he met with honesty and love.

This week, we remember Asel.

This week, we remember martyrs everywhere who were killed fighting injustice and oppression.

History should not be forgotten. From the pain of the past we must move to a better future. We must wake up and lead for justice and peace. We must embrace our role in ending oppression and building a world in which all are respected.

Seeds of Peace is growing and developing. As a part of this process, we are approaching things in new ways. We will progress and be a true light on the path to peace.

We exist so we can create together a future in which, having learned from the agony of the past, we can all thrive in a world free of oppression, racism, and violence.

Like Asel, Bashar is a Palestinian citizen of Israel. He is currently the Palestinian Programs Director at Seeds of Peace.

7 educators leading change in the classroom and beyond

Oct 5, 2019 / No Comments

For more than 20 years, educators have played a vital role in supporting Seeds of Peace’s efforts to cultivate new generations of young leaders.

From Los Angeles to Lahore, they multiply our impact in traditional classroom settings and beyond: Supporting our alumni in their own projects to lead change at home, utilizing the skills and tools they learned from Seeds of Peace in educational initiatives within their communities, and even starting schools and programs that focus on underserved populations.

October 5 is World Teachers’ Day, and in honor of this internationally recognized UNESCO holiday, we invite you to learn more about some of the dedicated educators who have contributed to and benefited from Seeds of Peace programming, including as GATHER Fellows and Delegation Leaders (educators and community leaders who travel with a delegation of Seeds to Camp and participate in educational workshops).

Here are a few of their stories:

Mehwish, 2015 Pakistani Delegation Leader, 2019 GATHER Fellow: Based in Lahore, Mehwish works with vulnerable communities, especially youth: educating them on their rights, empowering them to make good choices, and engaging them in the civil process so that they might be voices of change. Read about how she helps others find their voice through education.

Anis, 2018 GATHER Fellow: His experience volunteering at a refugee camp in Greece inspired Anis to create El Sistema Greece, a project that uses music education as a tool to bring opportunity and humanity to refugee children. The NGO’s mission is to transform conflict through music, friendship, and mutual human support. Find out how Anis’s group uses art and music as tools for consolation, regeneration, empowerment, and education for children in the camps.

Pious, 2008 Educator, 2016 GATHER Fellow: Originally from Ghana, Pious moved to Maine in 2002 and has been working with marginalized youth ever since. As a Youth and Community Engagement Specialist at the Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine and a City Council Member of Portland, Maine, he has spent the better part of his career focused on engaging youth and creating dialogue across cultural, ethnic, socioeconomic and faith-based groups. Hear Pious talk about his life and work as the first Muslim member of Portland’s City Council in Episode 1 of the Inspired podcast.

Molly, Delegation Leader, 2018 GATHER Fellow: After spending two formative summers at Camp as a Delegation Leader (2011 and 2018), Molly started to wonder what would happen if school felt more like a camp—a place that prioritizes good human development, building meaningful relationships, and that believes young people are capable of doing big things while they are still young. Find out how she’s been working to bring some of her most meaningful Camp experiences into the classroom.

Ahmed, 2004 Pakistani Seed, 2018 GATHER Fellow: What he lacked in funding, Ahmed more than made up for with determination when he set out to break the cycle of poverty for children in Pakistan. The method: Providing free, quality education to young girls who almost certainly would not have had otherwise had the opportunity. Step into the school that Ahmed founded in Lahore in Episode 3 of the Inspired podcast.

Hanoch, 2015 GATHER Fellow: Using everyday objects, Hanoch creates colorful collage portraits that spark the imagination and stimulate new ways to look at the world beyond the status quo. As a Fellow, he worked to create an arts education curriculum and teacher training course based on his artistic method that helps participants explore themes like composed identity, history, dreams, community, and the “other.” Read more about his work.

Marios, 1998 Cypriot Seed, 2018 GATHER Fellow: As a teacher, Marios found that one effective way to promote peace and detoxify relations between Turkish and Greek Cypriots was by building empathy between children. Motivated by the heartbreaking effects he was seeing that stereotypes and othering have on his young students, he set out to counter messages of intolerance with with ones of intercultural respect. Learn more about the children’s book series that he created.

Find out more about programs and resources that Seeds of Peace offers for educators, and discover more inspiring stories about educators who are supporting young changemakers in classrooms and communities around the world.

What We’re Reading: Imagine the future

Oct 16, 2019 / No Comments

Bookstores, movie theaters, and streaming services are full of them—works of fiction that offer visions of bleak, hopeless dystopian futures.

As a society, we’ve become pretty good at imagining the worst outcomes, but shouldn’t we be giving at least as much ink and headspace to the kind of worlds in which we actually desire to live?

That’s precisely what we ask campers to do: Imagine the future that you want, and the roles that we can each have in helping to build that kind of world. For this edition of What We’re Reading, we’re highlighting books, articles, and podcasts that help us see the way life could be, offer strategies to make and embrace change, or that help us see the systems, structures, and behaviors that prevent us from creating the worlds in which we all have a real chance at happily ever after.

Towards Collective Liberation: Anti-Racist Organizing, Feminist Praxis, and Movement Building Strategy, by Chris Crass
Chris Crass offers learned lessons, and often deeply personal and vulnerable reflections, from organizers and activists working to challenge systems of oppression, in the spirit of lifting up questions that can help to feed vision, analysis, and strategy for creating systems of liberation. He draws on bell hooks’ concept of collective liberation, which recognizes the ways that systems of domination are interconnected and affect us all (differently and disproportionately), with specific attention to how to “help align people with privilege to oppressed peoples’ struggles united by an overall vision of a free society.” Reading personal essays and interviews of the journeys, awakenings, and struggles that others are going through allowed me to deepen my own thinking about my role and path in this work, and fed my understanding of the broader challenges, complexities, messiness, and possibilities involved in building movements for justice. As Crass makes clear, the goal is not perfection, but rather collective learning, organizing, accountability, and liberation. — Eva Armour, Director of Impact

On Being: “Called and Conflicted” (Shane Claiborne and Omar Saif Ghobash)
In this episode of the award-winning podcast “On Being,” host Krista Tippett discusses spiritul border-crossing and social creativity with two people who have lived with some discomfort within the religious groups they continue to love—Shane Claiborne, an Evangelical activist and author, and Omar Saif Ghobash, a diplomat of the United Arab Emirates and author of “Letters to a Young Muslim.” Alternately light hearted, searching, and deeply meaningful, this high-level conversation between two great thinkers from different faiths and different nationalities wonderfully models the sorts of encounters we are aiming to foster every day at Seeds of Peace. — Jonah Fisher, GATHER Director

Emergent Strategy, by Adrienne Maree Brown
Adrienne Maree Brown is an activist who really shifts the conversation on how change happens—within communities, movements, and as a planet. Her book clearly shows that what we do “at the small scale is how we are at the large scale,” and this sets to tone for all of our systems and structures. This is seen in nature as well as how local change connects to global change. — Kiran Thadhani, Director of Global Programs

The Power, by Naomi Alderman
In this book, teenage girls all over the world begin waking up to find they have immense physical power, and with barely a touch, can destroy people and small armies. The author explores what happens when the power dynamic shifts … and it’s not pretty. But what this author also does is explore the very notion of power itself, and by vividly showing a world in which girls and women can use their physical strength to overpower men, we see just how imbalanced and dangerous the world is in which we currently live, and the brutality women have endured since the dawn of time. — Deb Levy, Director of Communications

Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don’t Know You Have, by Tatiana Schlossberg
Books about the environment—at least the ones based on science—can be scary, and while this one has plenty of statistics that could leave one trembling in the corner, to do so would be missing the point. Along with a surprising dose of humor, Schlossberg, a former science reporter for The New York Times, gives an eye-opening account of the daily choices we make that have lasting environmental impact. Yes, it was alarming to learn that particles from the athleisure wear that I treasure today could one day end up on the beach alongside my great, great grandchildren, but it’s also empowering to know that it’s not inevitable. There are better choices for the way that we shop, work, eat, and travel, and we can choose to do things differently. — Lori Holcomb-Holland, Communications & Development Manager

What would you add to this list? Have any recommendations for future editions of What We’re Reading? Let us know in the comments below, or send your picks to lori@seedsofpeace.org.

A truce among teens in Maine brings young people from the troubled Middle East together for three weeks
The Philadelphia Inquirer

Aug 18, 1999 / No Comments

BY LINI S. KADABA | OTISFIELD, MAINE The big news at the Seeds of Peace camp, tucked deep in the towering pines, had been the raucous pillow fight a few days earlier.

Then details of violence half a world away hit this placid spot. A young Palestinian furniture salesman on a suicide attack had rammed his car into hitchhiking Israeli soldiers, injuring 11 before police shot him to death.

In Maine, the campers—Israeli and Arab teenagers—listened. Then something astonishing—and unthinkable back home—happened.

Adi Blutner, 14, an Israeli, embraced Dena Jaber, 15, a Palestinian. To an outsider, the magnitude of the gesture, repeated throughout the camp one day last week, might be lost, but the campers understood.

“If it had been at the beginning of camp,” Adi said, “I would have gone to my Israeli friends and said, ‘See. See. Why are we even here?’ But the person that it felt right to go to was Dena.”

Adi and Dena are two of the 172 fresh-faced Israeli and Arab teenagers who have traveled 6,000 miles to the unusual Seeds of Peace camp to make friends with those who live only yards away back home. Today, as the teenagers prepared to return to the Middle East after a tour of Washington, they promised to stay in touch with enemies-turned-friends.

“They come with preconceived ideas. They have their facts ready,” said Linda Carole Pierce, a former North Philadelphia native who directs the daily rap sessions that are the heart of Seeds. “Then they find out they like the same music. They’re teenagers … You watch them grow past the fears.”

John Wallach, a former Middle East correspondent with Hearst Newspapers tired of the endless carnage, founded in 1993 the nonprofit camp, which for fiscal year 1998 had a cobbled-together budget of $1.9 million. The camp brings together teenagers from the troubled Middle East, and occasionally other conflict areas, for three weeks of bonding in the woods of Maine. (Private donations cover the $2,500 per-camper cost.)

This could never happen in the Middle East. It takes an idyllic and neutral location. It takes this haven on Pleasant Lake near Portland, the old boyhood camp—Powhatan—of real-estate developer Bob Toll, who bought the place a few years ago with his wife, Jane, a board member of Seeds, to save it from development.

“It’s the old NIMBY business—not in my backyard,” laughingly said Bob Toll, who built himself a home along the lake.

In 1997, the Tolls of Solebury, in Bucks County, agreed to lease the camp property, rent-free for now, to Seeds, which was looking for a long-term home for its camp. The Tolls also raise funds for the camp.

“Here you have people who are brought up to intensely dislike someone else,” the chairman of Toll Brothers Inc., the Huntingdon Valley real estate company, said. “Now you bring them into an environment [where] … you’re playing football, baseball, soccer, and all of a sudden it becomes more important to live with that person.”

Such moments happen often once the campers, who must sleep, eat and do just about everything in mixed nationality groups, clear the initial hurdles of prejudice, distrust, even hatred. Sure, they come wanting peace, these mostly middle-class children picked by their governments to fill the 450 prized slots in the Seeds programs. But peace, it turns out, means many things.

“Our history books don’t say the same thing,” one camper said.

Jane Toll, who often bikes over from the lake house, has learned that lesson.

“I used to try to figure out an answer—who’s right and who’s wrong,” she said recently. “They’re both right.”

Of course, it is one thing to reach that spot intellectually, and it is quite another to sleep in a bunk next to someone known as the enemy of your people for generations.

“We don’t try to divorce them from the real world here,” Wallach said. “What we’re trying to do is get individuals, human beings, to begin to care for each other … to have some compassion for each other.”

Wallach, who is Jewish, has written with his wife, Janet, a biography of Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat.

“It’s all about the enemy has a face,” he said. “It’s all about breaking the barriers of fear.”

That’s why a hug between an Israeli and a Palestinian is such a big deal. That’s why every camp activity carries enormous meaning, whether it is climbing a wall and trusting your safety to the other side, or building a sculpture that reflects both sides’ suffering, or competing in that camp ritual, the color wars—recast here as the color games, for obvious reasons—or even sharing a tube of toothpaste with a bunkmate.

“Maybe I can’t see the side of Palestinians because I’m Israeli,” Adi said at one rap session. “But I tried to,” she said in English, the language of the camp. “If I was Palestinian—and this is so hard for me to say because I feel I’m betraying my country—but I’d probably do the same.”

She sat in an uneasy circle with nine other Arab and Israeli 14- and 15-year-olds in the Nature Hut. All around the camp, groups of teens gathered for 90 minute coexistence sessions, the frank, often-heated discussion of the very issues stymieing peace negotiators back home.

Typically, when the Israelis and Arabs begin, they are at odds over, you name it, the West Bank, water rights, Israeli settlements, each side practically competing over who has suffered more. Imprisonment. Bombs. The intifadah. The Holocaust. But by the end, the teens shake hands over real agreements.

“All of us had this thing in ourselves, to make friends with the other side, to achieve something that our leaders could not,” said Shirin Hanafieh, 18, of Jordan, who has returned for a third summer, this time as a peer leader. “The way it works here, you wish this was the real world.”

But even here, peace isn’t always so neat. Adi’s group, Group G, has struggled from the start. Old disputes that have plagued the Middle East for decades continue to simmer, and sessions have ended with mean words, even tears. Some of the hurt spills over into late-night conversations. That’s why facilitators walk the bunk lines.

This evening was no different. Group G grappled with the suicide attack. One moment, Adi conceded much—just the type of compassion that Seeds hopes to sow. The next, the gulf between Israeli and Arab loomed as wide as Pleasant Lake.

The violence, she said, “makes me want peace, to stop the terrorist acts.”

That offended the Arab campers.

“That is not called a terrorist act,” shouted Mofeed Ismail, 15, a Palestinian whose cousin was killed by Israeli soldiers. To the Arabs, the suicide attacker was a freedom fighter whose own family had suffered at Israeli hands.

“I’m very sad about today, but he was not from Hamas,” Mofeed said, “and he had his reasons.”

That offended the Israelis.

“OK, he was a freedom fighter. But you know … soldiers were injured. They could be my friends,” said Israeli Alexandra Koganov, 15.

The firestorm blazed, until facilitator Liat Marcus Gross, an Israeli working with Palestinian facilitator Farhat Agbaria, tried to put it out.

“You said earlier what happened made you want to make peace,” she said, calmly. “You are not making peace right now.”

If camp seems hard, the return home is harder. There the struggle for peace begins with friends and parents. Many encounter taunts of traitor, or worse, because they have befriended the other side.

Palestinian Zeina Jallad, 16, on her second visit to Seeds, describes a most ordinary, but extraordinary, friendship. Since the last camp session, she had invited her best camp friend, an Israeli girl, to her home. But in the Middle East, all that has happened before weighs very heavily, and Zeina’s family was wary at first.

“It was very hard to have the enemy in your house,” said Zeina, who has seen her father imprisoned, and uncles and cousins, and who has had three relatives “martyred.”

“But, we are accepting it,” she said of the successful visit. “I want to go forward, without forgetting what happened.”

To that end, Seeds of Peace gives campers an e-mail address that allows what has sprouted here to bloom there despite the harsh words, the checkpoints and borders. Often camp friendships grow to include families and schoolmates. Middle East camp alumni also report and edit the English-language newspaper the Olive Branch, and last year a youth summit was held in Villars, Switzerland. This fall, Seeds will open a center in Jerusalem, where alumni—more than 1,400 Israelis and Arabs—will gather.

Back at the Nature Hut, Group G had fallen apart. To cool down, the group divided into Arabs and Israelis—the Arabs speaking Arabic, the Israelis speaking Hebrew. After 30 minutes, they came together.

Said Adi: “Now, I understand the goals of Seeds of Peace. It’s not to make peace between us, politically. It’s to make friends. We leave this place as true friends.”

Said Mofeed: “I agree.”