OTISFIELD, MAINE | Seeds of Peace will graduate its 5,000th young peacebuilder this summer from its International Camp in Otisfield. 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 … FULL STORY

OTISFIELD, MAINE | Dozens of volunteer carpenters, landscapers, painters, plumbers and electricians affiliated with Toll Brothers are spending June 8 preparing the Seeds of Peace International Camp for its 21st summer of work with youth from the Middle East, South Asia and Maine. “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 … FULL STORY

NEW YORK | Seeds of Peace marked 20 years of empowering young leaders from conflict regions with a celebration on May 21 at 583 Park Avenue in New York City. 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 … FULL STORY

A new project questions India and Pakistan’s shared historical narrative. 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 … FULL STORY

In a unique project, a group of young people place side-by-side the two versions of history taught in textbooks in India and Pakistan—in order to introduce an alternative, neutral narrative to the students 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, … FULL STORY

NEW YORK | As part of its regular Speaker Series, Seeds of Peace hosted a breakfast conversation with National Public Radio President Gary Knell and Egyptian Seed and journalist Mona El Naggar on May 2. 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 … FULL STORY

MUMBAI | Most schoolchildren in India associate the 1905 partition of Bengal with Hindus and Muslims uniting to oppose the division of the state along religious lines. They learn that Bengalis from both religions composed songs, marched barefoot to the Ganga and tied rakhis on each other in protest. In Pakistan, however, the partition of Bengal sparks off a different set of associations—those of furious Hindus agitating only because they couldn’t bear to see Muslims become a majority in East … FULL STORY

MUMBAI | Indian Seeds, Delegation Leaders and Seeds’ supporters met in Karjat, outside of Mumbai, on April 27 to participate in a Habitat for Humanity Youth Build.” “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 … FULL STORY