BY BRIAN A. GNATT | While tensions in the Middle East remain an international concern, a group of teens from across the world gathered in Maine this summer to begin the peace process on new ground—the playground.
Potomac’s Newsha Moraveji, a senior at Earlham College in Indiana, worked as a counselor during the four-week session at the Seeds of Peace program in Otisfield, Maine. Despite being situated on the beautiful Lake Pleasant, the Seeds of Peace program provides more than the ordinary four weeks of canoeing, basketball, campfires and arts and crafts.
Founded by journalist John Wallach, Seeds of Peace strives to secure lasting peace in the Middle East by bringing together teens from around the world and helping them to understand and to make friends with their “enemies.”
“We see the vision,” Moraveji said. “It is a bit far away right now … but it would be unbelievably great.”
From July 20 to August 21, 162 boys and girls ages 14-15 from Israel, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Tunisia, Qatar, Palestine and the United States planted the seeds for world peace—a colossal goal for a month-long session of summer camp. The camp strives to make kids realize they shouldn’t hate each other because of their nationality or religion, and emphasized peace through talking and living together.
“They really start to make friends with kids they would have never ever been friends with before,” Moraveji said. “Before they came here, their governments said ‘don’t’ compromise at all—these people are animals.'”
Moraveji was in charge of seven girls from five different countries during the camp session, but said it wasn’t all that strange because she’s used to living with people from different countries. Aside from her time spent in Iran as a child and also two years ago, last fall she spent 3½ weeks living in Israel and then 3½ weeks in Palestine.
Seeds of Peace campers are required to speak English, so language barriers at the camp aren’t a problem. After its fifth year, Seeds of Peace executive vice president Bobbie Gottschalk said the program is working better than ever. While it started with 46 boys in 1993, the camp will expand next year to include two sessions and be able to accommodate almost double the kids that attended this year’s camp.
Gottschalk said campers are people who excel in leadership in their home countries and are handpicked by their country’s ministers of education. Most of their parents pay one-third of the costs, while Seeds of Peace subsidizes the other portion, she said.
While in college in 1962, Gottschalk said she attended a similar program in the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War, but said the Seeds of Peace camp is much more structured and successful than her experience 35 years ago.
While campers have a 90-minute coexistence workshop each day where they talk about issues related to their countries, Gottschalk said it’s the daily routines and interactions between the children that really help relations in the end.
“The fact that they sleep next to each other and brush their teeth with the enemy, it breaks the ice,” she said. “That person didn’t get up in the middle of the night and stab you.”
Morajevi said she was amazed at how well the kids at her camp got along with each other, and that she would like to see the program expanded to include kids from Iran, her native country.
“My mom and I want to bring Iranian kids to camp because there is a lot of anti-Semitism and anti-American sentiment in Iran,” she said.