wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] To peace in a pod

[Deeanna Alford <dalford@CTR.PCUSA.ORG>]

 03283
July 15, 2003

 To peace in a pod

Summer camp makes bunkmates of kids from U.S., Middle East

by Evan Silverstein

LOUISVILLE - Issues of war and peace came alive for 12-year-old Andrea
Pauw as American soldiers fought their way to Baghdad. She found herself
pondering a hard question: How should a Christian respond to such chaos and
killing?

 Although she participated in church-supported peace vigils in the early
days of the war, she's still wrestling with the question.

That's why she will join about a half-dozen other young people from her
Presbyterian congregation at a camp that combines sports and recreation
with peace education and conflict resolution.

It's the Cultural Peace Camp near Buffalo, NY, where Pauw and other
middle-schoolers will gather on July 20 for a four-day "mission trip"
sponsored by Crescent Hill Presbyterian Church in Louisville.

"The war did affect me," said Pauw, who will be a seventh-grader in the
fall, "and I think it's going to make me want to make friends and get to
know people from the Middle East better. ... If the war hadn't happened, I
probably wouldn't be as excited to go."

The camp, in its seventh year, brings together American youngsters and
kids of a similar age who were born in the Middle East or are of Middle
Eastern heritage. It is held at Duffield Presbyterian Center, a camp ground
near Delevan, NY, about an hour's drive southeast of Buffalo.

The aim of the program is to encourage participants, typically kids
between 9 and 14, to learn about each other's cultures and traditions in a
neutral setting. The hope is that the kids will learn that understanding
and cooperation are more rewarding than prejudice and conflict.

"I think that's a good idea," Pauw said, "because a lot of young
(Americans) have the impression that all Middle East people are terrorists.
But if we actually get to meet them ... I'll bet a lot of them will be
really nice."

The children will take part in activities including Middle Eastern line
dancing, music, boating and water games, as well as fishing, rope-bridge
building and soccer. They also will take in a workshop on alternatives to
violence, learn a bit of Arabic calligraphy, keep peace journals, and make
a "peace quilt" out of square panels created by all the campers.

"We are educating them about peace - in a fun way," said Aida Faris, the
Presbyterian founder and director of the Buffalo-based Center for Middle
East Studies Inc. (CMES), which sponsors the camp.

Faris expects 20 to 25 children to participate in the camp program this
year.

"I'm very happy about it," said Amy Pauw, Andrea's mother, a professor at
Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. "I think it shows that she's
beginning to see her Christian faith affecting her view of the whole world,
and in political and social matters as well as personal matters.

"The CMES, established in 1993, is a non-profit organization housed at
Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Buffalo that promotes peace and
understanding between Americans and people of Middle Eastern backgrounds.

Faris, a native of Beirut, Lebanon, is an educator and a one-time
president of the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) of Lebanon who
travels around the country speaking on Middle East-related issues. She
presented a workshop on Middle Eastern Women during the 2003 Churchwide
Gathering of Presbyterian Women in Louisville, which ended on July 13.

Faris said the peace camp was established in 1997 to give local youth a
chance to experience the culture of the Middle East in a non-competitive
environment. She said American and Middle Eastern youngsters come to
appreciate one another's cultures by sharing common experiences, and learn
about non-violent ways of resolving conflict.

"We teach them how to build a rope bridge, and then we explain this is how
we bridge human relations," she said. "Like you're building this rope
bridge, you can build human relations the same way. It's bridging our
relations here: Arabs and Americans.

"Camp Duffield is owned by the Presbytery of Western New York. Camp
counselors are specialists in education and psychology with experience in
camp leadership, Faris said.

"We have a specialist in nature who teaches about nature through games,"
she added. "She takes them on a hike. She goes to the pond and takes out a
sample from the pond, and the message she gives them: 'Look at how
peacefully all these creatures in nature co-exist.'"

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