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Gottschalk to receive Lehrman-Pikser Award for outstanding service

Oct 10, 1997 / No Comments

WASHINGTON | Two deserving members of the Washington Jewish community—Seeds of Peace Executive Director Barbara (Bobbie) Gottschalk, LCSW-C, ACSW, and Ben Williamowsky, DDS—will receive the Jac J. Lehrman-George M. Pikser Award for outstanding professional or volunteer social service.

The awards will be presented Thursday, November 20, at the 1997 Jewish Social Service Agency (JSSA) Annual Meeting at Washington Hebrew Congregation.

In her 13 years on the JSSA staff, Bobbie Gottschalk was instrumental in developing a wide range of programs for individuals with disabilities. She considers that accomplishment as “doing the impossible” in an era when such programs were just beginning to emerge.

Now she’s again doing the impossible at Seeds of Peace—bringing together Arab and Israeli teenagers together at a Maine camp where they share their lives for four summer weeks. As JSSA’s Special Services director, Gottschalk created, developed and managed counseling, case management, and advocacy programs for individuals with disabilities and their families.

“When I first started at JSSA there was nowhere for families to turn,” she said. “Society didn’t expect people with disabilities to lead normal lives. When we first started offering services, people came pouring out of the woodwork. We had opened a Pandora’s box that needed to be opened.”

Gottschalk also helped establish JSSA’s innovative and widely acclaimed counseling program for deaf and hard of hearing individuals, and was instrumental in the successful effort to make JSSA offices barrier-free. During her tenure, a JSSA Special Service Subcommittee investigated the need for group homes for adults with disabilities, eventually developing the now-independent Jewish Foundation for Group Homes. She also helped develop a dance troupe that includes deaf and hard of hearing members under the auspices of the Bethesda Academy of Performing Arts.

Gottschalk was invited by journalist John Wallach, founder of Seeds of Peace, to become the organization’s first executive director. Dedicated to teaching Arab and Israeli teenagers to forge the personal friendships that are the building blocks for peace, Seeds of Peace achieves its goal by bringing Arab and Israeli 14-year-olds—175 of them this past summer—to camp, where they share every aspect of life, from sleeping and eating together to playing sports to learning conflict resolution.

The five-year-old organization has graduated more than 600 teens from Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Morocco, Palestine, Qatar, Tunisia, and the United States—as well as Bosnia and Serbia. “When they come to us, the kids believe their enemies are not to be trusted, that they’re dirty cheaters out to get them,” Gottschalk said. “Then they come to camp and experience the opposite. They sleep in a cabin together, eat together, play together, brush their teeth together—and nothing bad happens. So then they have to adjust their thinking, because what they believed just doesn’t fit anymore.”

Central to the success of the four-week program is its neutral, supportive environment, and coexistence workshops, in which professional American, Arab and Israeli facilitators teach listening and negotiation skills, leading to empathy, respect, confidence and hope.

Back in the Middle East, the camp graduates participate in art weekends in neutral communities, creating “Building Blocks for Peace” sculptures out of building materials; participate in coexistence workshops, reunions and conferences; make presentations and initiate projects at their schools to help dispel the misconceptions of their peers; and, in Arab-Israeli pairs, write articles for their eight-page newsletter, “The Olive Branch,” published four times a year.

In March, Gottschalk received the Medal of Honor from Jordan’s King Hussein. Gottschalk describes herself as an “expert audience, because I love watching people make progress, and I’ll do anything to foster it. At JSSA, we helped people achieve as close to a normal life as possible, and that is an extremely satisfying experience.”

At Seeds of Peace, Gottschalk is reprising her role, “but on a larger scope. I’ve moved from my neighborhood to another part of the world to be an expert audience—to laugh and cry and respond—and to watch the important progress taking place. What is more important than bringing Egyptians, Palestinians and Israelis together 24 hours a day?”

Gottschalk has fostered progress in her local community as well. She served on the Montgomery County Commission on People with Disabilities, and on the boards of the Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington and UJA Federation, chairing UJAF’s 1993 Super Sunday fundraising effort. She is a board member and past president of the Bethesda Academy of Performing Arts and is a founding board member, past secretary, and current advisory board member of the Jewish Foundation for Group Homes.

According to Gottschalk, the Seeds of Peace participants best describe its benefits. “An Egyptian boy said that Seeds of Peace is the place where you find out what kind of character you really have,” she said. “And a Jordanian girl said that to make peace, you first have to go to war with yourself, and this the place you can do that safely.”

For teenager, peace runs in the family
USA Today

Aug 4, 1998 / No Comments

BY LEE MICHAEL KATZ | OTISFIELD, MAINE When her friends at the Seeds of Peace camp want to tease Dalal Erekat, they call her “Saeb’s daughter.”

Dalal, 16, is the daughter of chief Palestinian peace negotiatior Saeb Erekat. Youths here learn to live in peace while Dalal’s father is still trying to negotiate it.

Dalal had to assume her father’s role and negotiate for Palestinians at a special Seeds of Peace summit in Switzerland in May. She called home to the West Bank town of Jericho with new-found professional respect. “Dad, I know how hard your job is,” Dalal told her father. She learned “the whole land is on his back.”

Deputy U.S. Middle East peace envoy Aaron Miller’s teenage daughter also attended the summit where the Arab and Israeli youths worked out a peace agreement. Shortly afterward, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat told Miller and Saeb Erekat, “It’s clear that your kids are doing a lot better job than you are.”

Despite her father’s job as a peacemaker in recent years, Dalal says her view of Israelis was marked by relatives and friends injured in clashes with Israeli soldiers. “I used to hate them because of what I saw in my life,” she says. “Now, I have changed. I am with my Dad.”

Dalal has become close friends with Israeli girls at camp. “We eat together, we sleep together. We talk about boys, music, politics, families.”

Saeb Erekat, 43, says that when he was his daughter’s age he was “throwing stones at Israeli vehicles, demonstrating and fighting.”

He says that it is important for a new Israeli generation “to see my daughter as a human being.”

“I don’t think you can change adults,” Saeb Erekat says. “I really hope that this is a new generation that will be free of all inhibitions.”

That could happen, Dalal says. “The future is not written for me.”

What We’re Reading: Love, leaders, courage, and justice in Black America

Feb 25, 2019 / No Comments

The former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass is often quoted as saying that “once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”

Regardless of time, location, class, or race, reading has long been a gateway to knowledge, understanding, and empowerment—which is why so many societies throughout history have banned books or reading among groups of people they wished to oppress.

At Seeds of Peace, we’re in the business of empowering, so it should come as no surprise that there are many voracious readers here on staff. We are constantly talking about, reading about, and sharing ideas about dialogue, leadership, empathy, and people working to change the status quo. And because we think many members of the Seeds of Peace community also hold this passion, we’re starting a new series, “What We’re Reading,” that gives a window into this ongoing conversation.

Each month, we’ll share staff recommendations of several timely or theme-related books, articles, reports, and more that in some way reflect the Seeds of Peace mission. And though some works might touch on political topics, they are not meant to endorse a certain view or take any side. Rather, we are looking to share works that will hopefully educate, inspire, stimulate conversations, and/or build empathy.

February is Black History Month in America, so we’re kicking off the series with a focus on African-American authors, culture, and history. These works examine struggles involving race, gender, sexuality, and economic inequality; show the links between conflicts in America and conflicts abroad; and put us in the shoes of people chasing dreams, speaking truth to power, falling in love, and, all too often, trying to find a place in a system that was set up to exclude or oppress them.

We hope you find new ideas and experiences in these works, and if so, we’d love to hear about it. Are there other books you would recommend? Let us know in the comments section, and happy reading!

The Blacker the Berry by Wallace Thurman
Set in the 1920s, this story from Thurman, a renowned contributor to the Harlem Renaissance, follows the life of a very dark-skinned black woman who leaves her home in Idaho for Los Angeles, then New York City, in hopes of finding a community where she will be accepted. It is not a quick, how-to guide to overcoming racism and discrimination, but it is a quick read that will help the reader understand different perspectives of how something as basic as the shade of your skin can literally dictate and change a person’s life. The U.S., and other parts of the world, have had “reform” and “change” in the 90 years since this book was published, but some problems linger; and the underlying theme of discrimination and colorism still rings true throughout many communities today. This novel makes you question whether we are making a difference at all, or if we are just renaming our societal problems so there seems to be change. — Imani Jean-Gilles, Communications Intern

Death at an Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools by Jonathan Kozol
In 1964 Kozol entered the Boston Public School system as a fourth grade teacher at one of its most overcrowded and dilapidated schools. Here, he discovered an institutional apartheid, a where teachers beat and neglected black students, often referring to them as “animals” and worse. Death, a 1967 National Book Award winner, was the definitive book on poor public education in Boston. More importantly, it really told the truth about public school for Black students in large cities in the U.S. — Tim Wilson, Senior Advisor & Director, Maine Seeds Programs

Racing to Justice by John A. Powell
This book and other works from Powell are a gift and true lesson to people working to build a future where belonging is at the center of our systems, structures, relationships, and identities. Racing to Justice emphasizes that how we talk, do, and live race has vast impact on our imagined futures. If race isn’t central to how we understand our current or future social constructions, we will continue to perpetuate “inequality, mass incarceration, full participation in our political and cultural structures, and—perhaps most critically—with our most fundamental questions about who we are.” — Kiran Thadhani, Director of Global Programs

The Time of Our Singing by Richard Powers
Here’s a novel, (a small piece of furniture, really, at 630+ pages) that blew me away with its intensity, authenticity, raw emotion, and human truths. It’s the story of an African-American woman and a Jewish German immigrant man who meet at the 1939 Marian Anderson concert on the National Mall in Washington, DC. They fall in love, get married (breaking laws at the time—both civic and ‘moral’), and have three children. This book gave me a glimpse into America’s recent past and the human toll of systems of oppression the way no history class ever has, and put me inside the shoes of someone who struggled with identity over the course of a lifetime … a lifetime that spans multiple social movements and mores. — Deb Levy, Director of Communications

Don’t Call Us Dead by Danez Smith
Danez Smith is a black queer poet, and I think one of the most important young poets of whom I am aware. This book, a National Book Award for Poetry finalist, begins with “Summer Somewhere,” which imagines black men who have been killed in acts of violence popping up in an afterworld that is a perpetual summer day on the block. Here is a poet who loves black men—in a society that does not—and this love and care saturates the poems. There’s beauty, brutality, genius, and humor, often all at once (see Dinosaurs in the Hood). The entire book is a gift, and the gift is his imagination; it’s as though he said “there’s no good place for us, so I’ll write one.” — Greg Barker, Manager, Facilitation Programs (P.S. The Poetry Foundation has compiled an outstanding collection of poems, articles, and podcasts celebrating Black History Month.)

Overlooked: Black History Month The New York Times
This special edition of the The Times’s belated-obituaries series shines a light on remarkable black men and women who in some way shaped our world or blazed trails for future generations. From a gender-bending star of the Harlem Renaissance, to slave-turned-millionaire abolitionist, these are lives worth studying, celebrating, emulating, and remembering for their accomplishments, as well as for identifying the systems that prevented many of them from ever achieving the fame or stature they deserved in their lifetimes. — Lori Holcomb-Holland, Communications and Development Manager

Lewiston students try to raise their voices, but protest interrupted
Portland Press Herald

Dec 10, 2014 / No Comments

A poster inscribed with #blacklivesmatter—echoing a national movement to talk about race and justice—is ordered removed at Lewiston High School.

LEWISTON | A group of Lewiston High School students say school officials infringed on their right to free speech by ordering them to remove a poster they put up in school to protest grand jury decisions in two states not to indict police officers who killed unarmed black men.

The students said they had initially considered joining a nationwide protest during school last week by walking out of class. They had alerted school officials about the walkout so the administration wouldn’t be blindsided.

One of the leaders of the effort, Muna Mohamed, who is also senior class president and student representative to the Lewiston School Committee, said she was told that if the students walked out, they could face “unintended consequences,” including possible suspensions.

“We were told that other students might feel uncomfortable and it could lead to other demonstrations,” Mohamed said. Instead, she said, the students were encouraged to express their position in an educational way, such as creating a poster.

But after the poster went up in school, with the hashtag “#blacklivesmatter” on it, school officials told them to take it down.

“#blacklivesmatter” has been used by many on Twitter as part of the nationwide conversation over racial justice and the incidents in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York City, in which unarmed black men died at the hands of police officers. Grand juries in both cases declined to indict the officers, leading to protests—and in some cases, violence—over racial profiling and violence by police.

Chandler Clothier, a junior who designed the poster, said she was told Monday morning by Principal Linda MacKenzie to take the poster down. She said MacKenzie objected to the #blacklivesmatter hashtag and told her she would have to change it to “all lives matter” if she wanted the poster to stay.

The students said the poster they created was intended to stimulate discussion about race and justice.

“They keep saying they want students to raise their voices, but they want to define the students’ voices, and I feel that’s unfair,” Clothier said.

In addition to the headline, Clothier’s poster included displays with the last words of several black men killed by police, such as “I can’t breathe,” the final words said by Eric Garner in New York. A medical examiner ruled his death was caused by a chokehold used by a police officer.

High school officials said the students didn’t follow procedures requiring that posters be approved by school officials before they are put up.

The students admit they didn’t submit their poster for approval, but said that policy often isn’t followed.

However, in an email Tuesday, MacKenzie said she hadn’t seen the poster, telling the Portland Press Herald that “we have not seen nor approved any information and/or posters from students, due in part to the snow day today (Tuesday).”

MacKenzie did not respond to follow-up emails seeking to clarify the discrepancy between the students’ account and MacKenzie’s statement Tuesday that she hadn’t seen the poster. MacKenzie also did not respond to an emailed question asking if her objection was to the “black lives matter” message.

Superintendent Bill Webster said that failing to get prior approval by school officials is the issue, and that the matter was handled by officials at the high school.

“This isn’t the first poster that’s come down because it was put up before being vetted,” Webster said.

Students should be involved in national events, including the ongoing debate over race and police actions, he said.

“These events are unfortunate, but they are also tremendous activities for discussion and fostering student involvement in democracy,” he said.

Mohamed and her friends believe the poster could have sparked a conversation about race that should take place at the school. One of the other students involved with putting up the poster, senior Kalgaal Issa, said the Ferguson and New York City deaths haven’t come up when students discuss current events in class.

“There should be more awareness about it,” Issa said. “It’s like this really didn’t happen. That’s unbelievable.”

Webster said the high school doesn’t have racial problems, and that students of all backgrounds take part in school and after-school activities. Lewiston has attracted thousands of Somali immigrants fleeing strife in their homeland, which has boosted the presence of racial minorities in the schools.

Linda Scott, a member of the School Committee, said she couldn’t comment on the poster because she hadn’t heard about the matter until Tuesday. However, she did say it’s not unusual for high school students to protest and she generally doesn’t see anything wrong with that.

But another school board member, Jama Mohamed—no relation to Muna Mohamed—said he draws the line at using school property for protests.

Raymond Clothier, Chandler Clothier’s father, said he supports his daughter taking a stand and he backed the sentiment in her poster.

“I’m astounded that something as simple as ‘black lives matter’ is causing all this,” he said.

Read Edward D. Murphy’s article in The Portland Press Herald »

Alumni Profile: Tom
Taking a small chance, making a big impact

Dec 17, 2018 / 1 Comment

Our alumni are working in ways small and large to make an impact in their communities. This “Alumni Profiles” blog series will feature some of our over 7,000 changemakers in 27 countries around the world who are working to transform conflict.

It’s one thing for a coach or a teacher to encourage students to expand their horizons, to push themselves, to see that taking even small steps outside of their comfort zone can make a lasting impact.

It’s another thing for that teacher to follow his or her own advice.

In the spring of 2017, Tom, who is the head of the physical education department at Cony High School in Augusta, Maine, said he was at a point in his nearly 30-year career where he “wanted to throw himself out there a bit.”

A few months later, he found himself unpacking his suitcase in a cabin in rural Maine for Seeds of Peace’s inaugural “Educating in a Diverse Democracy” course. At 57 years old, Tom was becoming a first-time camper.

Tom had become a Maine Seeds advisor earlier that year, and soon after learned about the nascent course. Launched in the summer of 2017, the program was designed to bring together educators from across the country to learn from one another, to focus on their craft, to support Seeds, and to multiply impact across communities where Seeds of Peace already exists or hopes to grow.

The more he learned about Seeds of Peace, the more Tom said felt it aligned with his core beliefs and much of the work he tries to accomplish as an educator.

“I was getting paid to coach sports, but early in my career I found that I was more intrigued by personal growth than whatever I was teaching. Phys-Ed is just a backdrop to making people better people,” he said. “It’s okay if you’re not a great volleyball player. Are you kind to other people? Do you go out of your way to help them? The bar for that sort of thing is pretty high for me.”

He applied for the program hoping it would allow him to better understand the Seeds’ experiences at Camp, and to hopefully pick up more skills for an experiential learning class he teaches at Cony. That class, much like Camp, uses activities like ropes courses and team-building exercises to develop confidence, leadership skills, and the ability to work well in groups.

Boot camp aside (Tom is a fifth-generation Marine), he said his parents never had money to send him and his siblings to summer camp. And like any first-time camper, there were the prerequisite nerves. When he first arrived at the Seeds of Peace Camp, Tom worried about how he, being the only P.E. teacher in the course, would fit into the group. Would he be able to keep up with all they were learning? Could he pull his own weight in the discussions?

What he found, he said, was “a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

His cohort quickly bonded over pickleball matches in their free time, meals where they could talk with their peers instead of monitor students, workshops that taught them new ways to reach their pupils, and, perhaps most importantly, intense, open-hearted dialogue sessions.

As one of only two men in the group, Tom, who is white, said it was eye opening to hear the many challenges women and people of color in his group had faced in their careers and personal lives. Some of their stories he’ll never forget, like that of a black educator from California who said she lives in constant fear for her son’s safety in dealing with law enforcement.

“I keep my ear on what’s going on in the world, but it’s different when you have someone sitting two feet away from you who is going through these things,” he said.

After the session, Tom said he returned to school re-energized, and with tools for dealing with conflicts, connecting with students, and widening their perspectives that he is using “all day, every day.”

One such tool is an an exercise that his cohort had gone through at Camp and that he began his experiential learning class with this year. He placed on a wall a photograph of what appeared to be a homeless man pushing a cart down a busy city street, and asked the students to talk about what they saw. From body language, to lighting, to the photographer’s intentions, the students’ vastly different responses, Tom said, “blew me away.”

“I told my class that we’re going to have challenges ahead of them, and to remember that we all saw different things in the same picture. We all come from different backgrounds and have different challenges, and if we want to have success as we work together, we have to honor those differences.”

For Tom, the course largely validated what he had always believed about teaching: that the most important thing an educator could do was connect with and care about students. He said he also hopes that his going to Camp shows the Seeds he advises that he’s fully committed to their success. He understands a little better what sort of transformations they’ve gone through, and can better help them figure out what to do with the newly lit fires in their bellies.

“When the Seeds come back from Camp, it reminds me of when I was coming out of boot camp: We all felt like we could jump out of helicopters and were ready for anything,” he said.

Over the past few months he’s helped them channel that enthusiasm into big projects, like organizing a 20th anniversary reunion in November for Maine Seeds and supporters. But he takes more joy in helping them understand the importance of seemingly small actions–like standing up for kids who are bullied, or eating lunch with lonely kids who want company.

“Seeds come back so passionate for helping the world and the human race, and my challenge is to focus them,” Tom said. “I tell them that they might have setbacks, but start with what’s around you–your friends, family, classmates. A small thing can impact a lot of people.”

Seed Stories: Reflection on the Tree of Life shooting

Nov 9, 2018 / No Comments

The shooting that occurred at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh felt personal to many. But for one Seed, the event truly hit close to home.

I think I heard gunshots.

When I texted this to my mom, my first thought was that a robbery had gone badly. Or maybe a drug deal. A robbery seemed more plausible, but neither scenario made sense in my quiet, tree-lined Squirrel Hill neighborhood in Pittsburgh.

Then I heard the sirens. The wailing got louder and louder as ambulances, SWAT vehicles, and patrol cars careened down my street as I watched from my window. My friend texted me that there had been a shooting at Tree of Life Synagogue at the end of my block. I am Jewish. I know people there. My friend lives across the street. I searched the Internet for confirmation. A lone British website was the first to report that, yes, there had been a shooting there—many shots fired, not just one. I soon learned that a man armed with several guns had gone into the Synagogue to kill as many Jews as he could, people who were gathered there for services.

I was in shock. How could this be happening in a country built on the principles of religious freedom and the right to peaceful assembly? How could it be happening in my city, Pittsburgh, ranked as one of America’s most livable? How could it be happening in my neighborhood, one of the most vibrant, diverse, and welcoming Jewish communities in the United States? I am young, but not so naïve as to believe that history has no contradictions or ironies. It is a pattern of zigzags, of forwards and backwards. But this—in 2018, at the end of my street—did not seem possible.

The truth is that this incident was a kind of robbery—a robbery of life, of 11 good people’s identities, of their dignity and potential for doing good, of their right to gather in their synagogue and study scripture. It was a robbery of humanity committed by one man whose ideological and political views were rooted in hatred and prejudice. At first, I felt sick and stunned. Then I felt sad. And then … angry. And then back to sad for all the police officers who got hurt. Then I felt horrified by the faces on TV–family members, friends, and neighbors of the victims whose lives were all torn apart by one man with an assault rifle.

But then as the hours went by, I felt emboldened. Several candlelight vigils were held in Squirrel Hill that first night; I went to the first and witnessed incredible support from all of Pittsburgh’s communities and religious denominations. I did not go to the second vigil; instead, I went to hear the powerfully positive speech of Magda Brown, a Holocaust survivor, sponsored by the Chatham University Women’s Institute and the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh. Her message was clear: we will survive in the face of any type of hatred. She had survived the worst of it.

This past week, I have had far more questions than answers in my head. Did Robert Bowers ever know any Jews personally? Had he ever had a conversation with a Jewish person? Where had he learned his hate? Who were his teachers? Did the Internet play a role? What was he so afraid of that he would feel called to violently destroy so many lives, including his own? And what’s going on across our whole country these days as people separate themselves into camps of Left and Right, “us” and “them?” Can political extremists ever reach a middle ground?

In 2017, at the Student Diversity Leadership Conference in Anaheim, California, I was introduced to the power of dialogue in a safe space as a bridge to understanding, a means of connecting people across race, culture, religion, identity, and socioeconomic divides. There, selected high school students and faculty engaged in free and open discussions about politically divisive topics. Assumptions were challenged; opinions were evolving. Inspired, I applied to the Seeds of Peace Camp.

By special permission, I was the first person from Pittsburgh to be accepted into this competitive program. I spent three weeks in Maine in daily dialogue with other participants, talking about our cultural identities and learning to share and listen in equal measure. The goal of the dialogues was not to convert anyone to a different position or angle on any issue, but simply to listen and understand different points of view. The goal was to give each of us the opportunity to hear other kids’ personal stories and experiences, and then reevaluate our own viewpoints. I realized that only by being exposed to another person’s story can we begin to truly understand our own. By learning the reasons for others’ differences and opinions, we begin to make sense of them and even respect them.

My experience at the Seeds of Peace Camp cemented my view that dialogue is essential to solving the misunderstanding and fear that underlie so many of our conflicts. Robert Bowers was on a social media platform called Gab, where white supremacists talk to each other in their own sealed echo chamber, never engaging in dialogue with people “outside” or hearing other people’s stories and experiences. Seeds of hate are sown on that site. I’m reminded of Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie’s powerful TED talk, “The Danger of a Single Story.” The danger of talking or listening only to those who agree with you was shockingly apparent in the shooting in Squirrel Hill on Saturday. Bowers had cocooned himself in an airless space of ignorance, fear, and confusion. He brought death and destruction into the Tree of Life—and all for nothing.

When Bowers was admitted to the ER at Allegheny General Hospital for his own gunshot wounds, he shouted “I want to kill all the Jews.” He was being treated by a Jewish doctor and nurse.

I don’t believe that President Donald Trump has single-handedly caused this rise in hate speech. I do believe that his failure to call out hate speech for what it is—a fomenter of extremism—has encouraged white supremacists and anti-Semites to be more vocal. When Trump came to Tree of Life, I stood on my friend’s front lawn in front of the synagogue and held up a sign asking for hatred to stop. He saw me and my sign. I hope he got the message.

I will always wonder if safe and rational dialogue at home, at school, at a house of worship, or at a workplace might have saved Robert Bowers and his 11 victims from their tragic fate. We will never know. What I do know is that it couldn’t have hurt and might have helped.

What really happens in dialogue? A peek behind the curtain

Nov 7, 2018 / 1 Comment

Down a dusty path marked by a hand-painted sign reading “Dialogue Alley,” a cluster of pine-needle green wooden structures sits like a chain of islands: similar in appearance from a distance, but a busy ecosystem plays out within each.

As anyone who has attended Camp knows, what takes place within these buildings—facilitated dialogue—is at the core of Seeds of Peace.

While most summer camps offer immensely bonding experiences, Seeds of Peace realized from the beginning that this wasn’t enough: if profound and lasting transformations were to take place, then people from across lines of conflict or difference also needed a way to engage with one another on deeply personal levels.

“If Camp had been only about singing, dancing, sharing a bunk, I don’t think we’d enjoy the same special friendships that we do now,” said Jiya (Indian Delegation, 2008). “It’s dialogue that made us Seeds, and dialogue that will keep us Seeds.”

In broad terms, dialogue sessions give Seeds a safe place where they are able to listen and to be heard; to experiment with conflict in ways that don’t tear communities apart, but might actually bring people closer together; to understand what needs to change in society, and cement a desire to work for those changes.

But for those who are not Seeds, dialogue can hold a bit of intrigue. The 110-minute daily sessions are completely off-limits to anyone who is not a facilitator or a member of that particular dialogue group. This isn’t meant to hide the proceedings, but rather to create a sacred space—one where people who normally wouldn’t be in a room together can feel safe being vulnerable and honest with one another. This privacy is essential for transformation to occur.

Invariably, one of the most common questions we hear from non-Seeds is: “So what really happens in dialogue, anyway?” The answer is as layered as the people participating, and the intricacies change by the year, the Camp session, the group, the day, the minute. But in a series of interviews with Seeds of Peace facilitators and a presentation given to a small group of Seed parents in New York City in October, we attempted to get a peek behind the curtain.

THE SETUP

Dialogue has changed in myriad ways over Camp’s 26 years, and the focus has expanded from primarily confronting the conflict in the Middle East, to developing empathetic leaders and addressing a wide variety of issues on personal, interpersonal, and structural levels.

The process begins each spring, with Seeds of Peace staff members painstakingly assigning campers to co-ed dialogue groups of 15 to 20 members each, which are purposefully different from their bunk and dining table assignments.

During sessions of Camp that focus on international conflicts, campers are divided into Middle East and South Asian groups, with American and British campers sprinkled among the two.

During sessions of Camp focused on divides within the United States, the groups are formed to represent a diverse mix of races, regions of the country, and, when the information is known, religious and economic backgrounds. In all the groups, the goal is to have a variety of voices, experiences, and identities that can each bring something unique to the conversation.

“A central idea of dialogue is that we all have important knowledge about what it means to live in this world, in a particular body with particular identities,” said Greg Barker, Seeds of Peace’s Facilitation Programs Manager. ”And by bringing these pieces of information together, we’re able to paint a much more complicated picture of the world around us.”

There are two facilitators in each dialogue group, and for the Middle East groups, one is always Palestinian, and the other Jewish-Israeli. The facilitators are not there to serve as authority figures, fact checkers, or judges; rather, they act as guideposts to help the Seeds stay on track in their journeys, and often serve as role models as well.

“We don’t pretend we don’t have differences,” said Danny Metzl, Seeds of Peace’s Co-Director of Middle East Facilitation. “The kids see that you can have different opinions and still work together, and that becomes a model for what can be.”

INTO THE HUT

Sitting in a circle of their peers, the first dialogue session usually begins with a lot of nerves and uncertainty. Some campers may be quiet and perhaps only nervously giggle or nod from time to time, while others may ask questions about what exactly they’ll be doing, or spout facts and figures, but be reluctant to speak from personal experiences.

In the Middle East groups, “both sides are very willing to come and speak, but they’re also very afraid. They don’t know what’s OK to say, and how free it is,” said Claire Dibsy Ayed, a Palestinian facilitator. “Some are feeling fear and guilt, saying things like, ‘I shouldn’t be here; they oppressed my people; everything being said by the other side is a lie.’”

For these reasons, the first few days in all of the groups are focused on building trust and community so that campers can become more honest with themselves and one another.

That work begins in small ways, including basic name games and getting-to-know-you exercises, as well as demonstrations from the facilitators of what good listening and bad listening looks like.

Perhaps one of the most important elements in the beginning can be creating group norms that must be reached by consensus, and that the campers agree to follow throughout the rest of the sessions. Common norms include speaking one at a time; agreeing to confidentiality; or “step up, step back,” a phrase meant to encourage those who don’t usually share in groups to challenge themselves to step up, and those who have a tendency to talk often to step back and give more room for others to share.

The only traditional rule that is enforced is no physical or verbal abuse. Beyond that, if they need to go to the bathroom or take a break, they don’t ask, they just go. If they don’t want to talk, they don’t have to do so. The experience is an exercise in anti-oppression for an age group that typically has little control over many of the details of their lives, from curfews, to clothing, to schedules, to whom they can date.

“Here in the dialogue huts, you get to decide for yourself how you’re going to be in this space. And this way, I think part of the power of dialogue is not just the content—it’s also the experiment in how humans can be together,” Greg said. “My experience is that once you have felt what it is like to be a little freer and to share power with each other, it changes how you exist in the world, because you know something else is possible.”

THE TIPPING POINT

After several sessions of setting up the framework, “there is usually a day where the real conflicts come out, and they’re ready to get into it,” said Eliza O’Neil, who has been a facilitator with the South Asia groups for the last two years and now serves as the US/UK Program Coordinator at Seeds of Peace.

In many of the groups, it usually starts to happen around the fifth or sixth day of dialogue, when campers stop worrying about disappointing the adults in the room, stop relying on facts and figures, and start speaking from personal experiences.

“It’s a tipping point,” Eliza said. “They realize that the stories they’ve been told all their lives are not always in alignment with the stories that their peers have lived, and there can be explosions of anger, or sadness, and feelings of being misunderstood.

“But then, we have something to work with—it’s no longer just back and forth trading positions and facts, these are actual stories.”

At this point, the Seeds typically begin to run the dialogue sessions themselves. Sessions may start with journal exercises to help get the kids thinking about different topics, but it usually doesn’t take much to get them ready to talk.

As the Camp session progresses, the campers may go through various exercises, with the facilitators making adjustments as they see fit within the groups—perhaps breaking off into smaller groups to explore issues on a more intimate level before bringing the group back together, or giving campers the chance to act out feelings they are having trouble expressing.

And as needed, facilitators will also push the campers in different ways to help them think more deeply about their opinions. These days can be intense; tears and frustrations are not uncommon. But these can also be the most powerful days, the ones where transformation begins to take place.

OUT OF THE HUT, INTO THE WOODS

There’s nothing quite like dangling together from a wire high above the ground to instill trust between two people.

Twice a week campers participate in Group Challenge, a series of increasingly difficult outdoor activities that serve as the physical component to dialogue.

The work begins on the ground with problem-solving activities, and progresses to low-ropes, then high-ropes courses that build confidence, trust, and cooperation skills. The activities could look like any team-building exercise, but there’s a twist: Working closely with dialogue facilitators, Group Challenge facilitators will often make adjustments to help address issues within the group. For example, two people who are butting heads in dialogue might be paired together on the ropes course, or a soft-spoken teen will be given a leadership role.

“These tools in Group Challenge exist specifically to address and disrupt group dynamics in dialogue,” Greg said. “And they are a major part of the process of transformation.”

THE WAY LIFE COULD BE

The goal of dialogue is not to sign peace accords, to find a solution to structural problems in society, or even to agree. It’s about profound personal transformation that Seeds will carry with them back to their communities and for the rest of their lives. In just three weeks, it begins to show itself in small but meaningful ways: challenging the status quo; asking questions to learn, rather than to make a point; really listening to what a person is saying, rather than just quietly formulating their next point; or seeing that “the other” is actually much like them, with fears and family and funny quirks.

It’s an experience that forever changes their view of the world, their place in it, and their sense of responsibility for improving it.

“We make a big deal here about the phrase ‘the way life could be,’ but I don’t think it’s cheesy or silly. I think it’s very real,” Greg said. “As a society, we’re really good at thinking about bad futures—just look at all the dystopian movies and books that are big blockbusters—but we’re really bad at thinking about what a good future might be like.”

In those humble green dialogue huts, however, there is something like a time machine, Greg explained, one that allows campers to travel to a different kind of future in which they can create the version of society in which they want to live.

“They start out creating a version that they’re familiar with, where they’re fighting each other. But slowly, as they experience life at Camp, and the person they thought was the enemy is now the person they dance and play with, they have to deal with how that goes together,” Danny added.

“And in dialogue sessions, they experiment with how they can live a better life here in this group. If it can be done here in a small group, perhaps it can be achieved outside in the real world.”

Seeds of Peace Camp brings Indian and Pakistani teens together
Washington File (US Department of State)

Jul 17, 2001 / No Comments

BY RAJESH JAGANATH | Indian and Pakistani high school students lived, ate, and played together for three weeks this summer at a camp in Maine as part of a program to enhance understanding between the youths of both countries.

This summer marked the first time that Indian and Pakistani youths met each other to discuss their lives and their futures. The summer camp was organized through the Seeds of Peace Program, an organization dedicated to conflict resolution. Its young participants came from societies that have recently experienced conflict.

John Wallach, the founder of Seeds of Peace, explained that his program was designed to “humanize conflicts that have been deliberately dehumanized.” The young people explored their own beliefs, assessed what their respective media have told them, and examined other influences on their lives.

U.S. and foreign officials greeted the Indian and Pakistani students along with other youths from the Middle East and the Balkans, on Capitol Hill on July 17. Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs, Christina Rocca, addressed the teenagers, praising their effort to “look at a traditional adversary in a new way, to begin to break cycles of violence.”

Among those attending the event were Tariq Ali, Embassy of Pakistan, and India’s Ambassador Lalit Mansingh. Both diplomats shook hands and praised the Seeds of Peace campers.

Akanksha Gandhi, a 14-year-old Indian participant, talked about her Seeds of Peace experience in interacting with Pakistani students. She said that she came to realize that “they’re just like us, exactly like us. They think like us and they talk about the same things we do. If we are so similar, we have nothing to fight about.”

Her comments were echoed by Sana Shah, a 15-year-old Pakistani girl, who said, “it doesn’t matter if you think differently because we have learned to accept one another with those differences. They can think differently and that’s not wrong.”

“I have just heard the Indian viewpoint. I had never even thought of the Pakistani viewpoint. You don’t just accept it and you might not agree with it, but the point is that you understand their view,” Shyam Kapadia, 15-year-old Indian student remarked.

Fareed Yaldram, 15-year-old from Pakistan, said that this summer helped both Pakistani and Indian youths to dispel negative stereotypes that they had grown up with. He, along with other participants, gave credit to their parents for their support in attending this program.

Seeds of Peace was founded in 1993 by author and journalist John Wallach to bring together Israeli and Palestinian youth to foster communication, understand the other side, and discuss how to achieve the peaceful future they both hope for. Since its inception, the Seeds program has grown from 50 to 450 participants yearly and has expanded to include other countries in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and South Asia.

Like many children in strife-ridden countries, the Indian and Pakistani youth were not yet born when the roots of conflict were planted. Yet countless of them have inherited the bitterness and anger erupting from the 1947 partition of the two nations.

Through the Seeds of Peace experience, the participants interacted in the comfort of a recreational setting in the woods of Maine, sharing cabins and meals, playing sports, and participating in art and music activities. Punctuating the program were special “coexistence sessions,” chances for the youths to express their frustration and confusion, free from the stifling environment they often find in their home countries.

Assistant Secretary Rocca, while praising the teenagers for their commitment to peace, cautioned that “ending cycles of violence is not the work of a summer or even of a decade. It takes more time, more persistence, more patience, and more courage than any of us could imagine.”

The most important part of the Seeds program is that it does not stop when the summer ends. Many of the teenagers plan on keeping in contact through the Internet, specifically through the Seeds of Peace ‘SeedsNet’. Several of the students said that they wanted to visit each other’s country and hoped to visit their new friends’ families and homes.

Seeds of Peace camp welcomes first Afghan participants
Washington File (US Department of State)

Jul 12, 2002 / No Comments

BY WENDY ROSS | OTISFIELD, MAINE Following six years of traumatization under the Taliban regime, and years of war in their country, twelve teenagers from Afghanistan—six boys and six girls—are now discussing those days in daily sessions mediated by trained facilitators at the Seeds of Peace lakeside camp in rural Maine.

It is the first time that Afghan youth have been included in the Seeds of Peace program that each summer brings 13- to 16-year-old young people from war-torn areas of the world—principally the Middle East, South Asia, and the Balkans—to this bucolic site. The participants stay for several weeks, living together and discussing the tensions between their nations.

The Seeds of Peace program, founded in 1993, is funded primarily by private and corporate donors, with some help from the U.S. government. The U.S. State Department, in conjunction with Seeds, is sponsoring the Afghan youth under a pilot program.

Including the Afghans, there are 166 participants at the camp’s first session, which runs from June 26 through July 17, and culminates with a visit to Washington, D.C.

The program for the Afghans, said Bobbie Gottschalk, the program’s executive director, “is a little different from what we have done before.” They are not at the camp to discuss differences among Afghanistan’s ethnic groups, but rather to share with each other the experiences they went through for so many years, she said.

Here, she said, there are people who can help the kids understand the trauma and help them make some sense of it, because what they went through was “crazy.” Under the Taliban regime, “they couldn’t do all the things that children usually do,” she said.

“Most of them were kept inside and the girls couldn’t go to school. They had underground schools. Their parents were arrested, their parents lost their jobs, their English teachers were shot because they taught English. Just all kinds of horrible things like that,” said Gottschalk.

When they first arrived at the camp, the Afghan kids did not talk very much, and did not understand very much, she said. “But we have some staff members who speak Farsi and that’s close enough to their own language, and also some of them speak Urdu, and that’s what the Pakistanis can speak to them in. So they’ve had a chance to get things explained and connections made. And I think everybody here is very welcoming to them,” she said.

“I have pictures that I have taken of them from the first days and all through the time and you can see the openness emerge on their faces,” Gottschalk said.

The Afghan program is a completely new initiative, said Marieke van Woerkom, a facilitator at the camp and fulltime Seeds staffer, who has been with the program for seven years.

“With the Afghan kids, we have them all together daily in one session,” to discuss their recent history, she said, “with two facilitators, one who speaks Farsi.”

“There are conflicts within the Afghan group itself,” she noted, “because the kids, even though they all live in Kabul now, are from different parts of the country. Some of them are from refugee families that ended up in Kabul. So the different conflicts, different ethnic groups, within Afghanistan are also represented within that group.”

The Afghan campers, she said, “are working on sharing their stories of what it has been like to live under the Taliban; what it has been like to live in a country that has been destroyed by war on so many different levels.”

Just to be able to talk together about their experiences, their fears, and their oppression in an environment that is nurturing and safe, is wonderful for them, van Woerkom said. “The girls especially have so many stories of what it was like for them to live under the Taliban. What it was like to not be able to go to school, and the way they were oppressed,” she said.

“Initially they said they were not going to swim, even though we have a separate swimming area for girls and boys. But three of them decided they would swim, so we got them long tights and long sleeved shirts and they swim in those. And it’s wonderful. They are learning how to swim. They are as happy as can be in that regard,” she said.

Aside from holding daily discussions together, the Afghan youth in every other way are part of the overall camp population. They share cabins with boys and girls from India and Pakistan, are assigned to dining tables with campers from all the different nations, and they participate in all the camp activities together with the other kids.

Coming to the United States was “a very big shock for them,” said Megan Hughes, education coordinator for the Seeds of Peace program. For six years the girls were not allowed to attend school under the Taliban regime, she said, and as a result “their English is not as good as that of some of the other campers. But they are doing well.”

When they first arrived at the camp “they were probably among the campers that felt the most intimidated by other campers, by their surroundings, by what was expected of them. I think they didn’t really have a clear idea of why they were here. But over the past few weeks there has been a huge transformation,” Hughes said. “Just yesterday we had a girls’ dance party that was going on during general swim time, where the Afghan girls and the Pakistani girls knew the same kinds of music, so they were teaching all the other girls their traditional dances which are very similar. So you can see in little ways how they are starting to feel more acclimated, how they feel more comfortable being here.”

An example of that is fifteen year old Sapna Rasoul of Kabul, one of the six female campers from Afghanistan, who was able to explain in broken English how much she likes the camp and how much she will miss it and her new friends when she returns home. Sapna said she “is so much happier” now that her country is free, and she can go to school, and speak out openly. She is now in the ninth/tenth grade, she said, and wants either to be a physician or a lawyer when she grows up so she can help her people.

When she first arrived in the United States, she said, she was shocked by the way women dressed, since in Afghanistan under the Taliban, women had to be completely covered whenever they left their homes.

Fourteen year old Mojibullah (Mojib), also from Kabul, said his time at the Seeds of Peace camp has been “very useful” to him, despite the fact that he was initially wary of coming to it. His parents, a Red Cross worker and a housewife, he said, were instrumental in sending him, but he objected at first. But as soon as he disembarked from the airplane in New York “after a very long and very hard trip,” he said, he knew his parents had made the right choice for him.

Mojib says he enjoys the camp “very much because we learn about peace and friendship, so that we can help our people when we return home.”

Asked about the plight of girls under the Taliban, Mojib pointed out that when he first began school, his big sister took him by the hand to school. She was in the sixth class and he was just beginning school. “Now we are both in the same class,” he said, because under the Taliban she was not permitted to go to school for six years.

“That’s amazing,” he said. “She was studying at home by herself, and now when the education starts back both she and I are in the same class.”

Mojib said both he and his sister want to become engineers so they can help in the rebuilding of their country after years of war. “It is impossible to forget quickly what happened,” he said.

He pointed out that the Seeds of Peace program he is participating in lasts 24 days, compared to the 23 years of war his nation has endured. “For 23 years we had a war in our country, so they gave us 24 days here,” he said, but that is not long enough to forget.

“We cannot forget 23 years of war in 24 days,” he said.

He said he is “very thankful” that the U.S. government and Seeds of Peace made a place for the Afghan kids this summer. He said he is sad at the thought he will be leaving the United States soon and added that he hopes he can return one day to study here where the educational opportunities are better than in his own country.

Alumni Profile: Ahmed
Educating a new generation of leaders in Pakistan

May 10, 2018 / No Comments

Our alumni are working in ways small and large to make an impact in their communities. This “Alumni Profiles” blog series will feature some of our over 7,000 changemakers in 27 countries around the world who are working to transform conflict.

Ahmed has been on our radar for a long time: three years after attending Camp as part of 2004’s Pakistani Delegation, he was elected the youngest-ever leader of the Youth Parliament of Pakistan.

Now, as one of our Seeds of Peace GATHER Fellows, Ahmed is using his visionary educational model—the Lincoln School System—to bring equality to women’s education in Pakistan.

Seeds of Peace: Tell us a little about your journey starting the Lincoln School System.

Ahmed: It was a difficult decision to start this academic institution, as I did it without funding from any donors. All I had was the will to transform the lives of poor children of Pakistan. The day I opened the school, we had 15 students; now we have 175. We have grown from a staff of two teachers to 11 teachers and six support staff. It’s been such a fulfilling journey, but it’s also just the beginning.

Seeds of Peace: Can you talk a little bit more about the program?

Ahmed: Lincoln School System is an organization that provides high-quality, affordable English-medium education [Ed: a system that uses English as the primary language of instruction] to children living in areas with low literacy rates. It works on a unique model that charges a full tuition fee for boys and uses that money to heavily subsidize the education of girls. We had to adopt this model as many people in Pakistan spend money on the education of boys while sending girls to extremely low-quality government schools or free Islamic seminaries.

Seeds of Peace: What do you aim to accomplish as a GATHER Fellow?

Ahmed: My vision is to reach out to millions of uneducated children in Pakistan and change their lives for the better. I know I cannot do it alone and I need to learn from some of the best minds working around the world. As I learn from people doing amazing things in their respective fields, I will be able to expand the network of schools and reach out to those children whose families have been living in poverty for generations.

Seeds of Peace: What is your superpower?

Ahmed: Wolverine’s super healing! No, seriously—it’s the ability to recover from any setback. There have been many times when I faced extreme difficulties and it seemed that I would have to curtail the scope of the organization. However, my team and I never gave up and always bounced back to transform the lives of children. I am very proud of it.

Seeds of Peace: What about the incubator in Stockholm got you most excited? Was there anything you were nervous about?

Ahmed: I was excited to meet amazing social leaders from around the world. I learned from the best of the best, but now I also feel like I have a lot of weight on my shoulders. I sincerely hope that I’m able to implement the ideals I learned in Stockholm and transform the lives of millions of children in Pakistan!

We wish Ahmed and Lincoln School System the best of luck! Of course, with the tools and support system the GATHER Fellowship, luck is the last thing he’ll need. For more information on the Lincoln School System, visit their Facebook page.

Photos by Stina Svanberg.