Older participants gather in Maine for workshops, networking, dialogue
BY STEPHEN KAUFMAN | WASHINGTON Approximately 125 Israeli, Palestinian, Egyptian, Jordanian and American participants of Seeds of Peace remembered coming to the organization’s Otisfield, Maine, camp as 14- and 15 year-olds, forming close friendships with peers whom they, only days before, would have considered their enemies.
Now these alumni have returned to Maine as adults in their mid-20s many with university diplomas and careers, and others with their military service completed.
Seeds of Peace invited alumni to participate August 12-20 in what it describes as its “Graduate Leadership Summit”—workshops on politics, business, media and conflict resolution. The summit also creates an opportunity for them to reconnect with old friends and establish networks for the future.
Welcoming the alumni, Seeds of Peace President Aaron David Miller told them August 13 that governments can end conflict but cannot create the transformations that are required to change people’s attitudes and character.
Miller encouraged the Seeds to lead the organization, create their own network and invent a more peaceful future.
Seeds of Peace, a nonprofit organization dedicated to conflict resolution among young people, invites 14- to 15-year-olds from the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia and Southeast Europe to attend three-week camp sessions in Maine, where they interact with peers on the opposite sides of their conflicts, learn to communicate with them, and even form lasting friendships.
According to the organization’s most recent annual report, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development made grants totaling nearly $850,000 to the program in fiscal year 2003. Those funds were given to support specific Seeds of Peace coexistence projects in the Middle East and beyond.
Workshops Focus on Leadership, Communication
For the graduate summit, Seeds of Peace acknowledged the new level of maturity and skills of its alumni, and gave participants like 22-year-old Dana, who served on the event’s Israeli steering committee, much control over planning and making decisions on whom to invite to speak to the participants and run the workshops.
“This is a leadership summit so we’re really trying to apply the leadership theme of us taking more lead and taking more part in planning our life in the organization and our life wherever,” Dana said.
In her media workshop, the participants focused on ways to raise outside awareness to Seeds of Peace in their home countries, as well as improve its image. “Either they don’t know it or they hate it,” she said.
Suggestions included conducting public service announcement campaigns and building networks between the participants with the Internet and through web cameras “so we don’t lose touch again [and] we don’t have to come to Maine whenever we want to talk.”
Khalid, a 25-year-old Palestinian who participated in the business workshop, is returning to his home in Ramallah with two plans of action. He wants to develop a comprehensive alumni network database to make sure all Seeds participants, past and present, will be in contact. He is also coordinating and seeking more funds for a conflict management program for Israelis and Palestinians in order to teach them “how to negotiate and do conflict resolution [and] mediation.”
“Everyone has their own way of thinking, but what we’re working on now is building the base of the new future coming up,” he said.
Sarah first came to Seeds of Peace in 1995. Now 25 years old, the Jordanian participated in the political group in the conflict resolution workshop, where participants discussed having an activist network for Seeds from all participating countries and organizing political action, as well as a study group that, over the next two to three years, will closely examine political texts and treaties. The group’s focus will include issues such as Israeli settlements, Palestinian refugees, Jerusalem, Israel’s security wall, and will ultimately hold a conference to negotiate a final status solution.
She explained that one of the main ideas behind Seeds of Peace is that if the people who are negotiating are friendly and understand each other, they will arrive at a solution that will be acceptable to both sides.
“Because it is a solution done by people who care about each other, it actually is feasible for both sides … it’s something that people can actually sign on to. It’s not an unfair, unjust kind of solution,” Sarah said.
The workshop would then present its negotiated solution to the general public, hoping that “people would really take it into consideration,” she added.
She criticized those in the region, not living directly in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, who condemn peace efforts but “don’t do anything,” describing that attitude as “a denial of the conflict in a sense.”
“It’s very easy to have simplistic views about an ‘evil enemy’ who has to be destroyed. … [But] you have to start thinking ‘no, this is not the way it is, and if I want to solve it I’ll have to acknowledge the complexity of the situation.’”