On June 26, over 200 Afghan, American, Egyptian, Indian, Israeli, Jordanian, Pakistani, and Palestinian youth ages 14-17 will raise the Seeds of Peace flag to open the organization’s 39th session of Camp.

The flag-raising ceremony will inaugurate a summer of dialogue and leadership development as campers engage across lines of conflict with people they once considered bitter enemies.

Among the campers are 32 Peer Supports—a select group of “Seeds” returning to Camp to engage in their own dialogue sessions that focus on individual growth and leadership skills.

During the second session of Camp, over 100 teenagers from across Maine as well as from Syracuse, New York, will come together to tackle intercommunal tensions in their states. The session will also bring together adult educators from the Middle East, South Asia, and the US to examine the role that the teaching of history plays in conflict settings.

Later this summer, 15 Israeli, Palestinian, and American Seeds will take to the high seas off the coast of Maine as part of Seas of Peace. The sailing and leadership dialogue program will take place in Otisfield and later aboard the 112-ft. traditional schooner, Roseway, run by The World Ocean School.

Media interested in covering the June 26 flag-raising ceremony in Otisfield should contact Tim Wilson at tim@seedsofpeace.org. Any other Seeds of Peace-related press inquires may be directed to Eric Kapenga at eric@seedsofpeace.org.

“I am very happy with the work we accomplished on the 15th Toll Brothers Seeds of Peace day,” said Shawn Nuckolls, Senior Project Manager at Toll Brothers. “Our annual Camp clean-up day has become a great tradition for Toll Brothers and our subcontractors. We are extremely proud to support the Seeds of Peace mission and we look forward to continuing our support every year.”

Toll Brothers Inc. is one of America’s leading luxury home builders.

Volunteers this year removed debris from across the entire Camp, performed carpentry work in every bunk, and rebuilt many of the steps and railings leading to Camp buildings.

“On behalf of our campers and staff, I would like to convey my deepest thanks to Toll Brothers and their incredible crew of volunteers,” said Seeds of Peace Executive Director Leslie Lewin.

“For 15 years now, we have been honored to host what we call “Toll Brothers Day” here in Otisfield. We are incredibly grateful to the hundreds of skilled volunteers who have dedicated their weekend to making our mission possible. We could not run this camp without their help.”

Seeds of Peace inspires and equips new generations of leaders from regions of conflict with the relationships, understanding, and skills needed to advance lasting peace. Toll Brothers is the nation’s premier builder of luxury homes. Toll Brothers, Inc., is the successor to three generations of home builders and is a publicly owned company whose stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE:TOL, www.tollbrothers.com).

TOLL BROS. DAY 2013

The evening honored Janet Wallach, President Emerita of Seeds of Peace, for her contributions to the organization’s success, and featured legendary peacemaker Senator George Mitchell.

Over 500 distinguished supporters, including politicians, diplomats, journalists, and policy-makers, joined Seeds from the Middle East and South Asia to celebrate the impact these Graduates are making in their home communities.

Speakers included Hashem, a Palestinian Seed from Arroub Refugee Camp and community organizer; Tal, an Israeli Seed and Knesset lobbyist; Warda, a Pakistani Seed who leads microfinance initiatives for women; and Mohamed, an Egyptian Seed who recently joined the staff as Director of Graduate Programs.

SPEECHES: SEN. GEORGE MITCHELL, JANET WALLACH AND SEEDS

More videos: Full 20th Anniversary Celebration ›› | Growing Seeds ›› | Clinton ››

20TH ANNIVERSARY DIGITAL JOURNAL

Three young Pakistanis – Qasim Aslam, Ayyaz Ahmad and Zoya Siddiqui – are providing schoolchildren in India and Pakistan with an opportunity to critically analyze, evaluate and question significant events in their nations’ shared history and heritage.

The History Project, comprising excerpts from three Indian textbooks and nine Pakistani textbooks, provides students an illuminating comparison of the ways that key historical events – leading up to partition – are taught in schools in both countries.

Last month, Aslam, Ahmad and Siddiqui visited four schools in Mumbai – officially launching The History Project in India. Next month, the trio plans to introduce the project to schools across Pakistan, in the hope that it will spark healthy debate, underpinned by curiosity, impartiality, and an open-minded look at the tumultuous epoch that is India and Pakistan’s shared history.

According to Aslam, the inspiration for The History Project came in 2005 from Feruzan Mehta, the then Country Director (India) for Seeds of Peace, an international NGO that seeks to inspire and train new leaders from conflict zones to build a more peaceful future. The inspiration grew in the ensuing years, and Aslam and Ahmad finally decided to make their shared dream a reality two years ago.

In an exclusive interview with The Diplomat, the founders of The History Project speak about the laborious process that went into the compilation of the book, the importance of a solid artistic element to complement the book and their experience of formally introducing their project to children in India last month.

What inspired you to undertake The History Project?

Qasim Aslam: It informally started off around 12 years ago when we met Indians across the border for the first time in our lives. We were at this conflict resolution camp [Seeds of Peace, hosted in Maine, USA], where a dozen Indians and Pakistanis were brought to live together for three weeks.

Over the course of that time, in addition to playing sports and indulging in other activities together, we found history to be a recurring discussion in our interaction. In some cases, the conversations resulted in flared emotions. Over those three weeks, we didn’t quite reconcile our versions of history, but we did find it in ourselves to respect the alternative reality, its existence, and the fact that it was as authentic as ours.

In an effort to scale this process, as it is super expensive to fly a couple dozen kids from the region to the U.S., we came up with the concept of The History Project; which, in essence, is taking the process to the kids themselves.

Was compiling the book a difficult process?

Qasim Aslam: In retrospect, it was. It definitely was. We probably underestimated the task at hand when we set out to accomplish it. The first few months, we went around from expert to expert, trying to finalize the direction of the project. Everyone seemed to have an opinion – a legit, daunting contribution that sent us back to the drawing board more than once.

We finally reached a conclusion after four months of extensive deliberations. Mid-way through the project, we realized that we couldn’t put out a book in pure text. We’d lose the interest of our target readership, kids between the ages of 12 and 15. The prospect of finding a decent illustrator turned out to be a journey in its own.

And then came the grand finale of selling such an idea to the Indian High Commission for the purpose of visas, coordinating with schools across the border and a dozen other hoops that somehow got sorted out and we found ourselves in Mumbai one fine Monday morning in April this year.

Zoya, as the illustrator, tell us a little about the artistic element of the book. What did you visualize initially for the book and what did you think would work for your audience?

Zoya Siddiqui: I knew from the very beginning that the task would not be easy. An illustrator’s job is to very clearly show and reaffirm an opinion, whereas our idea for the whole project was to refrain from propagating our personal opinions and simply reproducing what information already exists in textbooks/history. The idea of a faceless man immediately struck as the solution to the problem.

The faceless man essentially depicts what we, the team, are doing: displaying established opinions as clothes or symbols that can be easily adopted, worn and shed. The faceless man has no symbols or opinions of his own, but he theatrically demonstrates both histories. History is thus shown not as absolute truth or “fact”, but rather as variable opinions and stereotypes. The truth is unknowable, like the faceless man.

Do you think children in Pakistan and India will be able to formulate their own opinions about their shared history after reading the book?

Zoya Siddiqui: Actually, we have not aimed for the children to formulate an opinion on Indo-Pakistani history when they read the book. Our goal is to trigger a thought process, to unsettle the students and confuse them, which is somewhat like what we went through after our Seeds of Peace camp experience. Even after all these years, we ourselves are struggling for answers.

However, the struggle is good, important and healthy. Having answers and well-formulated opinions, I personally believe, is dangerous. We wish for the students to get started on that journey to critical thinking, beyond textbooks.

Ayyaz, you and your team visited four schools in Mumbai last month. What was the response?

Ayyaz Ahmad: The response was phenomenal. The children and the teachers both were extremely interested to know and understand the Pakistani perspective. They also had a number of questions about Pakistan beyond the scope of history. They were quite curious about how Indian history was viewed in Pakistan and also about the cultural similarities between the two countries.

How did you go about contacting schools in India to introduce the book? Were they initially hesitant?

Ayyaz Ahmad: In India, Seeds of Peace put us in touch with the local schools. In Pakistan, we are reaching out to different schools through friends involved with educational institutions.

When will you introduce the book to schools in Pakistan?

Ayyaz Ahmad: We have already started a round of presentations in Pakistan. In the next month, we hope to visit a number of schools to introduce the initiative.

Through your research, what were some of the major discrepancies that you found in the textbooks?

Ayyaz Ahmad: The primary difference is in the way different aspects of the same event are highlighted. This also became our focus as we worked on the book. The idea was that instead of imposing another narrative or our opinion, we would simply lay out what has already been written, to show that history is extremely dynamic and is a combination of numerous perspectives.

What do you hope your initiative achieves?

Ayyaz Ahmad: The History Project initiative has a two-fold objective; first, to enable the youth in conflict-stricken countries to have access to the other side of conflict history in their formative years. And second, to get youth to question the generally accepted stereotypes (not just pertaining to history) which form the foundation of their ideologies. We hope that the books will instill in the youth, the importance of recognizing alternative perspectives; that there is always another side to every story.

Read Sonya Rehman’s article at The Diplomat  ››

LAHORE | Is it time to re-write Pakistan and India’s shared history? To correct the past record?

Even a cursory look at the History Project, a compilation of excerpts from three Indian and nine Pakistani textbooks about 16 historical events that took place between 1857 and 1947, suggests so.

Students on this side of the border know of the causes that led to the partition of Bengal 1905, reasons that made the formation of the All Indian Muslim League a necessity, that Minto-Morley reforms was perhaps the first step towards the creation of Pakistan, about the Pakistan Resolution … and accession of Kashmir, and that Jinnah is their Quaid-e-Azam.

Across the border, these incidents in history incite a different kind of an interest. Take for instance the issue of Kashmir at the time of independence in 1947. The Indian textbooks say that after Hari Singh, then ruler of the state, decided to remain independent, Pakistan began to put pressure on him, and armed intruders from Pakistan attacked Kashmir in 1947. Hari Singh signed an agreement to join India, after which the Indian army went to defend Kashmir.

Pakistani textbooks say the Maharaja (Hari Singh) deliberately delayed acceding to Pakistan or India, and started a brutal campaign to oust the Muslims from his princely state. Over 200,000 people, who were supported by the tribesmen of NWFP, revolted, fled to Kashmir and were successful in liberating a large area from Indian control. “The Maharaja was forced to turn to India for help and the Indians agreed to help only if the Maharaja acceded to India,” to quote from the last chapter of the History Project on ‘Princely States’.

The book, launched on April 20, 2013, in Mumbai, places side-by-side the two versions of history taught in textbooks in India and Pakistan; it does not attempt to correct the overall narrative on both sides of the border. “The sole purpose of this project is to introduce the students to an alternative, neutral narrative on their shared history,” says Qasim Aslam, the co-founder of the project, adding, “We thought the differences would become self-evident when the two sides of the story were placed next to each other in a book form.”

Aslam and his co-founder, Ayyaz Ahmed, launched the book at four Mumbai schools last month. Next, they plan to tour schools in Pakistan to introduce the project.

Aslam beams as he hints at the response the project has generated so far: “We recorded 6000 facebook hits four days after the launch”.

The History Project is a culmination of months and months of exhaustive dialogue between Indian and Pakistani teenagers meeting as Seeds of Peace, an international camp for teenagers from countries in conflict held annually in Maine, USA, where other than discussing sports, common culture and traditions, they would stumble on the subject of common, shared past. They discovered a plethora of sentiments, sometimes hatred for each other and were able to trace the roots back to the history textbooks.

“I don’t think that there has been one person on the team of the History Project that hasn’t been astonished by the discrepancies in our different history texts,” says Alefyah Potia, a Mumbai-based team member of the project.

“Working on this project has not only changed my perspective on the apparently common history that our countries have undergone but also on stories and past events in general,” she adds, while remembering moments when she was in Lahore recently while working on this project, and “we were reduced to silence because of the vast differences, for example an extremely important event from the Indian side [Civil Disobedience Movement] is omitted from the Pakistani book”.

Working with Seeds from Pakistan since 2009, Potia thinks this project has been “an eye-opener and in many ways has got me more conscious of the way people interpret things and how easily we believe what is spoon-fed to us.”

Noorzadeh Raza, a Seed from Pakistan and an editor of the project, says, “Being a part of the project instilled in me the importance of bridging this gap [in India and Pakistan history] to construct a larger, more encompassing narrative that recognises the existence of alternative perspectives. We must understand that recognising the other side’s perspective does not in any way undermine our own—it liberates and challenges us, compelling us to delve deeper into ideas that we have long accepted as ‘fact’.”

Potia was one of the 28 volunteers who assisted the core team of Qasim Aslam, Ayyaz Ahmed and Zoya Siddiqui with the project. And Raja is one of five editors who helped the team give the book a complete shape.

Siddiqui jazzed up the book with illustrations of colourful but faceless figures. “She chose to use faceless figures to break the stereotypes of Jinnah and Gandhi,” says Ayyaz Ahmed.

The History Project has been funded by the British Council and Global Changemakers, an international youth network.

So, will the History Project develop as a permanent record of India and Pakistan’s shared history? Will it make way into textbooks? Aslam is not sure. “Not for the time being at least. We have to go a long way in changing the mindset of those at the helm on both side of the border.”

But young Potia has hope. “I think this project has a great future especially with the younger population as their minds are more open compared to adults who believe strongly in their views. I could see it when the Pakistanis working on the project were here in Mumbai and were making school presentations—how involved the students got, how stunned they were to see how the event they believed in so easily could have actually been another way altogether. They were so excited about interpreting the illustrations and talking to the Pakistanis that it was easy to picture this kind of double viewed curriculum taking place in India.”

Aamir Riaz, editor and researcher, says the History Project is worthy of praise yet without deconstructing our colonial and anti-colonial past we cannot address the core issues. “It is important to demystify resistance stories based on colonial knowledge. Ideally, history should be written from the perspective of ordinary people.”

Read Alefia T. Hussain’s article at The News on Sunday ››

Mona, who attended Camp in 1996, started the morning off with reflections on the influence Seeds of Peace has had on her over the years.

“I wanted to unravel what I had accepted, to unlearn, and then relearn,” she said about the years following her Camp experience.

Mona described the struggle for peace as a “personal quest for truth and change … a question of how far we’re willing to challenge our accepted version of reality.”

This process of critical questioning and challenge led Mona to a career in journalism, which she uses as a tool to gain insights into complex realities and critical issues.

“Journalism is an approach that allows me to challenge my own perceptions about all things, including conflict, religion, politics, identity, and humanity.”

Gary Knell echoed this belief in the power of the media in changing and shaping reality. His remarks focused on the idea of youth education as a tool for promoting tolerance and understanding. Having led Sesame Workshop for 12 years prior to joining NPR, Knell was instrumental in expanding the famous television program to conflict areas around the world.

Knell spoke of the shared values and goals of Sesame and Seeds of Peace, both of which are based on the premise that people are not born with divisions and hatred, but that they are handed down and can be countered.

“One idea can change the world,” said Knell, “Sesame Street and Seeds of Peace are examples of that.”

Knell’s commitment to educating a new generation based on trust and hope was apparent throughout.

“We need to build a generation of people who have information and who are informed with nuanced human stories,” he said. “We need to educate the public about the humanity behind the headlines.”

The event, hosted at the law offices of White & Case, LLP, drew a diverse crowd of Seeds of Peace supporters.

These divergent accounts of history have been put together in a book, ‘The History Project’, conceived in 2005 and compiled by youths aged 16 to 27 from both India and Pakistan. A core team of three Pakistanis, who were instrumental in creating the book, launched it last week at four Mumbai schools, two of them being J BPetit High School, Fort, and Gokuldham High School, Goregaon.

A note at the beginning explains that most of the book’s 30-odd contributors are graduates of Seeds of Peace, an international organization that brings together teenagers from conflict zones to a campsite in Maine, USA, for a few weeks every year. It was while debating history at this summer camp that most of the youngsters discovered the differences in their school textbooks. “We decided to make ‘The History Project’ … so that the reality that there are differences becomes literally inescapable,” said Qasim Aslam (27), a Pakistani entrepreneur and part of the book’s core team.

The project deals with the years from 1857 to 1947 and includes 16 historical events—such as the formation of the Indian National Congress and the All India Muslim League, the Khilafat Movement, Direct Action Day and the Mountbatten Plan.

“The War of Independence (in 1857) seemed like a good starting point because that is where the first divide happens,” said Pakistani Ayyaz Ahmad, another core team member who is also a consultant with the World Bank in Pakistan. Since the Civil Disobedience Movement is omitted from Pakistani textbooks, that page in the Pakistani section of the book is left blank. The editors have also focused on questions that recur in Std X and XII exams, because “if you trace a line across those events all of a sudden you can identify a narrative”, said Aslam.

To steer clear of controversy, the book’s editors chose to reproduce information from textbooks but not introduce an alternative narrative. “We stayed well away from coming up with anything that says we are experts and know what history is,” said Aslam.

This non-committal approach extends to the artwork, which uses a faceless character to avoid clichéd depictions of Indians and Pakistanis. “I wanted to illustrate the illustration of history (on both sides) without imposing my view on it,” said artist Zoya Siddiqui.

‘The History Project’ has only seven Indians among the 30-odd contributors. All five editors are Pakistani and more Pakistani than Indian texts were used. When asked about this, a core-team member said there was a shortage of volunteers from India and those who visited Pakistan took only three books. Besides Seeds of Peace, the book has also been funded by the British Council and Global Changemakers, an international youth network.

Read Nergish Sunavala’s article at the Times of India ››

“The temperatures there felt like a 102 degrees, but warmer still were the welcomes we got,” said Aziz, a 2012 Seed.

“The villagers were extremely thankful for the little help we gave in building their homes—many of them really appreciated the work we did, like painting.”

The 15 volunteers joined nearly 10,000 youth from across 10 Asia Pacific Countries as part of an effort to provide shelter for over local families.

“Bricks and stones only make houses, but what makes a home is the love and care you put into the house,” says Aziz.

Habitat for Humanity builds and repairs houses all over the world using volunteer labor and donations. Families purchase these houses through no-profit, no-interest mortgage loans.

Transportation to Karjat for the Seeds, along with their participation fees, was made possible by longtime Seeds of Peace support Chuck Oldanie and funding from Seminole Rotary, Largo Rotary and the Rotary Club of Seminole Lake.

HABITAT FOR HUMANITY