Camp 2025 in Numbers
- 89 campers representing 8 delegations: Egyptian, Indian, Israeli, Jordanian, Pakistani, Palestinian, US/UK.
- 17 Seeds returning to Camp for advanced leadership program.
- 29 hours of facilitated dialogue for new campers.
- 11 Delegation Leaders/Educators.
MIDDLE EAST, SOUTH ASIA, UNITED STATES/UNITED KINGDOM
Arrivals! | July 7
Today, we welcomed campers to the 33rd summer of the Seeds of Peace Camp in Maine. For a week, the staff has been preparing to host the 89 young people from the Middle East, South Asia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The new staff and the experienced staff have spent quality time getting to know one another so they can work together to support the campers.
The living quarters, dining hall, dialogue spaces, and auditorium have been organized to allow the campers to feel comfortable and safe. The new staff and the experienced staff have spent quality time getting to know one another, so they can work together to support the campers from both sides of their respective disputes.
Tim is back as the Camp Director, this time with our Assistant Director from Ireland, Paul. The Seeds of Peace country directors also hold senior positions. Eric is directing communications. Our nursing staff members from previous summers are also with us. Our Executive director, Eva, and our Chief Operating Officer, Vishnu, have also been here, working tirelessly as ever.
We are at a lovely facility with ample facilities, including a large sports fieldhouse, a fantastic ropes course, a well-equipped medical center, and a beautiful kitchen.
One of the best things about this place is the kitchen staff who feed us royally every day, despite the religious dietary restrictions. Tonight, when the largest delegations rolled into Camp on two big busses, the kitchen staff was able to serve them a very late dinner.
All of the campers have given us their cell phones and other valuables for safe-keeping. They will have the chance to phone home twice a week, but otherwise, cell phones will be stored away. For the next three weeks, the campers will focus on the “here and now” in this place.
Settling In | July 8
This is the second day of Camp. Yesterday was devoted to getting everyone settled here, with campers checking in with the nurses, receiving their Seeds of Peace t-shirts and sweatshirts, learning the rules of the dining hall, designing name buttons, creating welcoming homes in the dormitories, and learning where everything is located and getting to know the other people here.
Getting used to the normal Camp schedule takes a few days. We still begin each day with lineup and we still have a musical weather prediction for the day. We also have some body stretches and artistic sharing along with “bunk” cheers, even though everyone is living in small dormitories.
Jet lag is starting to wear off for all the campers and educators who flew for many hours to another time zone far different from their homes. No doubt, by tomorrow, almost everyone will begin to feel more at home.
Between dialogue time and dinner, we have unstructured time all together near the soccer field. There are rocks to climb on and sit with fellow campers, musical instruments and plenty of space to run around. This 40-minute time slot is a welcome change from the rest of the day, which is structured for the entire camp. Each day, the campers take part in sports, arts, dialogue and meals together. The rest hour following lunch is a time to catch up on sleep, if needed, and it offers a chance to get to know their bunkmates.
At dinner time, the second-year campers (Peer Support campers) led the whole Camp in our traditional chant before each meal. Everyone in the room stands up and says, “For Friendship, Health, Love and Opportunity, we are thankful!”
The evening activity, was an energetic Staff Show. It is a fun way to showcase all the different departments at Camp. Our talented staff used songs, dances, and skits to preview all the ways we incorporate mutual activities and “stretch zones” into our days.
On a sad note, Eva, Seeds of Peace executive director, and Antwan, Palestinian country director, announced to the Camp that our efforts to get US visas for the new Palestinian campers were in vain. We have two returning Palestinian campers here, along with one who is living in the UK, two new Palestinian campers from Gaza, and four Palestinians who are citizens of Israel.
In a tribute to the Palestinians who were unsuccessful in coming to Camp this summer, many of the staff members and campers danced and sang a song called, “Some Day” at the end of the staff show.
Flagraising | July 9
Special Activities | July 10
On this fourth day of Camp, most of the campers are feeling comfortable in this unusual setting. One of the reasons people relax fairly quickly is because the food is familiar to them, although they are sometimes treated to food that is unusual for them, such as Mexican cuisine. The kitchen staff has a good idea of what teenagers like to eat and they also enjoy preparing the type of food that is normally served in South Asia or the Middle East.
Our dining room is set up the same way for all meals and campers eat with the same group of people every time so that they can develop relationships with this intimate group. There are two other such groups, one for dialogue and one for living together in a part of the small dorms on this campus. Most of their activities are organized by dialogue groups, so the campers can get to know one another in more ways than one.
Counselors create “special activities” based upon their own interests. The campers have a chance to choose among these, normally getting their first or second choice. Each week, these choices change. Today they had book-making, cheerleading with tumbling, volleyball, and Ultimate Frisbee.
Dialogue groups are made up of campers from all the parts of the world present at this session of Camp. Today, Tim Wilson and Bobbie Gottschalk visited the dialogue group for the returning PS campers. They used examples from their own lives to talk about leadership skills they relied on to create the programs at Seeds of Peace.
Two alumni from Maine, Sophie and Boni, were invited to the evening lineup to talk about their Seeds of Peace experiences and the impact it has had on their adult lives. Their talk was just what we needed to hear.
At night, after dinner, we had a lip-sync contest. The music was chosen from popular repertoire. Each group competed on the basis of knowledge, enthusiasm and artistry. Working together on fun projects is a wonderful way to pull our temporary community together. Campers showed off their dance moves and confidence, making for a loud and enjoyable evening.
Indigenous Day | July 11
This was a special day because Corey, a Seed from an indigenous Maine tribe, spoke at our evening lineup.
He described the roles the indigenous tribes have played in this country’s history and the abuses they have suffered over the past 400 years since the European settlers began taking over their land. The tribes have been cut off from their food supplies and forced to live on prescribed land, limiting their ability to live in their traditional ways. They were not allowed to use their Wabanake language in public or in the government-run schools. Even today, the indigenous people who make a living by catching fish which they sell to others often cannot afford to eat it themselves.
Corey was able to make the connection between what his people have suffered and what other groups all around the world are going through currently. This resonated with the campers listening to him.
Corey is now a lawyer in Maine who represents indigenous people all across the United States. Two years ago, he was given a well-deserved award by the Holocaust and Human Rights Center at the University of Maine. In attendance at the award ceremony were 25 members of Seeds of Peace!
On Fridays, we hold religious services for both Muslims and Jewish campers and staff. These services are open to all who wish to observe them. Most people are not familiar with the religious practices of people in other religious groups.
The weather in Maine varies by the hour. It can be sunny and warm in the morning and cold and rainy in the afternoon. So, to prepare for this, we have a musical weather prediction presented by some of the staff at the morning lineup. We call this report the WAM!, the “weather appreciation moment.”
Poetry | July 12
One of the special activities, created by counselors, is poetry writing. The counselor who created the activity is Matt, a Seed who has personal experience with the life-changing impact of poetry. A small group of campers offered to read out loud the poems they had written this past week. Amazingly, they all chose to reflect on the deep loss of a parent, through indifference, substance abuse, or early death.
As each one recited their poem, you could feel their strength build as they spoke. Following this recitation, the counselor who taught Matt, as a camper, about poetry, was gleaming with pride. It was a full-circle Seeds of Peace moment.
Tomorrow, the campers are having a day off from dialogue. This is a planned break which happens once a week. It is a good time for the delegations to meet in their separate groups and allow all the campers an opportunity to call their families.
Last night was one of our traditional all-Camp activities we call the Trash Bag Fashion Show Contest. The campers were divided into six groups. Each group was given time to fashion two costumes out of trash bags and other materials, such as ribbons and aluminum foil. A panel of judges decided which groups won the contest. The backbone of this activity is working cooperatively toward a shared goal. The planning and humor they share help the campers see one another as partners. This makes future cooperative activities more likely to succeed.
The weather report in Maine is a lot like the ones in London: foggy, damp, and cool. Perhaps the sun will return tomorrow.
Deeper Connections | July 13-14
Now that we are in the second week of Camp, it is obvious that deeper connections are being made between the campers. Eight in-depth dialogues have already taken place. They have shared living space with people from all the delegations. They have been learning new skills and sharing their talents, day and night. And they have solved many group challenges in tandem with their dialogue experiences.
Living together means sharing the daily clean-up chores, like bed-making and sweeping. Occasionally, they even get a group grade on the level of care they give these chores. The group that gets the highest score with eventually get an ice cream treat, a prized commodity.
The second-year campers began to learn how to use the ropes course today. The course is quite sophisticated, with moving platforms high in the tree-tops and several climbing walls.
The evening activities provide all the campers with group challenges that are generally unusual and fun. Last night, they took part in an egg-drop contest and tonight they had to search all over Camp for designated objects or people and document their findings on cameras.
All through the day, you can see people getting along, as if they had been living together for years. On the volleyball court, you can see people come and go, in and out of games that never seem to end.
The campers are encouraging one another to try new ways of doing things, like dances and sports that are new for them. This envelope of kindness makes it possible for difficult conversations to be handled in the dialogue sessions. As time goes on, the dialogue session will cause hurt feelings. The outside envelope of kindness will cushion the hurt and confusion of these tough talks.
Indoor Fun | July 15
Summer has arrived in Maine with high temperatures and humidity. It is almost too hot to play sports outside.
Fortunately, we have a spacious and well-equipped sports center. Today some campers had a master class in basketball and some others had an advanced class in backward flips. There are several basketball courts and a completely padded room to do yoga, wrestling and back-flips. There were also some second-year campers teaching the new campers how to do cartwheels.
A colorful and airy art barn inspires campers and counselors to express themselves in original songs and drawings. One camper painted a self-portrait in the shape of a shadow. All around the shadow figure were shooting stars. She explained that the shadow figure represented the depressed state she was in when she arrived at Camp and the shooting stars represented the other people at Camp who have inspired her to break out of her depression and regain her real self.
There is also a good measure of humor in our community by now. Last night, we played “The Mostest,” a contest between dialogue groups to see if they could act out certain prompts, such as dance moves, dramatic acts, emotional expressions, in an all-Camp competition. The funniest prompt was to imitate people at Camp. These turned out to be a big hit, as one might expect. The judges were hard-pressed to select the winners among such accurate portrayals of the staff. But Dialogue Group E won the contest.
Intergenerational Learning | July 16-17
Today and yesterday, the second-year campers and the educators who accompanied the campers to our Camp in Maine met with Sami Awad, a Palestinian facilitator and nonviolence practitioner, to learn about non-linear thinking. It is uncommon to combine adults and teens as students, but in this case, sharing this dialogue space created a chance to understand the subject from two perspectives.
Toward the end of the combined session, the students were asked to sit in small groups and explore real life incidents in their past which they wanted to understand more fully. The incidents were then studied from multiple perspectives.
Late afternoons, the whole Camp has an unstructured hour to interact outside, informally, with one another. One counselor used the time to make good on a wager he made with a group of campers who were playing volleyball a few days ago. The group of ten campers were missing the volleys non-stop. The counselor decided to challenge them to achieve ten volleys in a row, after which he promised to dye his hair. Much to his amazement, the campers improved their game and did send ten volleys in a row, over the net. The counselor felt that he had to make good on his wager, so he used the unstructured time to allow the campers to spray his hair bright red! Fortunately, the spray washes out in the shower.
Last night, another counselor organized a mystery challenge for the entire Camp, searching for the “suspected culprit” who stole the Seeds of Peace flag from the Camp flagpole. Each bunk group formed a team which competed with the other bunk groups. Within an hour, Bunk 1 cracked the case.
Camp Director Tim Wilson started a running activity early each morning. We have a wonderful track for campers and counselors to do this. This morning, 21 runners showed up!
Sports Day | July 18
This was Sports Day. We were honored to have members of the Maine Celtics basketball organization and a local team of Ultimate Frisbee players participate. The Celtics focused on skills development, rather than games, while the Ultimate Frisbe players focused on the game. Both teams donated about two hours to working with our campers and counselors.
In the afternoon, an art class divided into pairs and then each partner studied the face of the other partner and then drew their portrait. Their prompt was to absorb the image, including the personality, and then put pencil to paper. Finally, they talked about what they learned through this exercise. They made amazing discoveries, just be slowing down and considering the face of the other camper. Each camper went away with the actual portrait and a better understanding of how they are viewed by other campers.
In the afternoon, the second-year campers took a hike along a 10-mile trail, adjacent to the Camp, led by their facilitators. They had a chance to see some of the waterways that we cannot see when we are at Camp.
Before dinner, the campers usually have unstructured time, when they are able to sit and talk with other campers and adults. No doubt, these are some of the most impactful moments at Camp.
The poetry special activity regularly shares their poetry with the rest of the Camp at lineup. This helps the poet come to grips with the weight of the life experience reflected in the poems. Some of the most poignant poetry has been about the loss of loved ones.
Last night was Bunk Night, a chance for the bunk groups to spend some time together. This usually involves some snacks and some mutual check-ins about how Camp is going for them.
Preparation | July 19
The Campers and the Delegation Leaders spent several hours rehearsing for Culture Night, which will take place soon. Each delegation will pay tribute to their cultural heritage with dances and songs, typical of their enduring cultures. Campers are permitted to perform with the cultural pieces with which they feel most comfortable. Each group has been allotted the same amount of time to perform.
Giving the campers freedom to decide which culture they feel most close to opened up some possibilities which might not be happening anywhere else on earth. For instance, the Pakistani and Indian delegations decided to dance both separately and together. Of course, their cultural heritage is definitely intertwined, but this is not often acknowledged so openly.
In the evening, the counselors organized an all-camp activity, organized in bunk teams. The objective was to create short videos about life here at Camp. The winning teams will have their videos screened at the Talent Show, later this week. And they will get ice cream, the ultimate Camp prize.
Rain & Culture Night | July 20-21
We had a normal day at Camp, except for the heavy rain, a visit from former campers and counselors and an evening activity we call “Café Night.” The rain forced us to stay indoors longer than usual because we are located in a wooded area, so the lightning is particularly dangerous.
After dinner, we had an all-Camp “Simon Says” in the auditorium. Ryan, a seasoned counselor, did a masterful job keeping everyone from making any moves, unless Simon said to.
That activity kept everyone occupied while the second-year campers decorated the dining room for Café Night. The older campers also instructed the other campers to sit and talk with people they didn’t know very well. Every ten minutes, they would ask everyone to rotate to another person. The second-year campers also acted as waiters, delivering snacks and cookies to each table. They had a playlist of popular music entertaining the campers, as well. Every now and then, a very popular song would come on and everyone sang along together. The second-year campers even cleaned up after the others had gone to their bunks for the night.
Then, this morning, the lineup before breakfast was really wonderful. A camper recited a beautiful original poem and staff taught the campers a new song. After breakfast, all the campers practiced for the Culture Night this evening. And what an night it was! Campers wore clothing or symbols of shared identity during the evening. Dinner involved dishes from many of the regions campers are from, including the Middle East and South Asia. Afterwards, cultural affinity groups and country delegations performed dance (some modern, some traditional or folkloric), poetry, and songs reflecting their national heritage.
High Ropes | July 22
Now we have less than a week left before everyone returns to their country and the 2025 Camp session will come to an end. Campers are looking forward to seeing their families again and beginning the school year. But after three weeks of living in this environment, they are beginning to anticipate how hard it will be to separate from their Camp friends.
The staff is also anticipating the separation from the campers and from the other staff members. Today, at the morning lineup, Tim Wilson encouraged everyone to consider how important their families are and how important their Camp relationships are becoming too.
The poets and dancers among us have been performing at lineup. More and more people are trying to give their best selves to this remarkable but short-lived community. In one more day, we will have a talent show. Until then, people will be creating and rehearsing every chance they can get.
The dialogue groups are going through the ropes course. This course requires strong arms and legs, as well as a lot of courage. Participation is voluntary. Most of the campers opt to try it. Watching and cheering on the members of the dialogue groups provides another opportunity for the members of the group to know one another more completely.
Color Games | July 23-24
We have been enjoying glorious summer weather: sunny but not too hot for outdoor sports. The campers are also getting ready to perform at the Talent Show. While they are busy practicing, the adults at Camp are organizing Color Games, an all-Camp cumulative competition in every sport and arts area they have experienced so far, and then some.
Most of the campers have no idea what Color Games is about, but the returning campers remember it well. In fact, we rely on them to guide the new campers during the many competitions going on, at once, all over Camp. Generally, the teams position their best players in each sport. So, we see the best version of each sport happening. During Color Games, the facilitators act as referees. When this is over, the campers will meet with their facilitators one last time to consider what they have learned at Camp and what they will continue in their home countries.
Color Games begins with an early morning wake up and an all-Camp rope pull. Each team takes a side of the long rope and tries to pull it past the mid-line. It is a good way to begin because every member of the teams has a position on the long rope.
VIDEO: Seeds of Peace Camp bridges divides amid ongoing conflict in the Middle East | July 24
Confronting Realities | July 25
Everything that has happened at Camp so far has led to confrontations with reality of discrimination both here at Camp and in the home countries of the campers. Historical wounds are also playing a leading role. It is as if another suitcase has finally been opened and all the emotional baggage has come tumbling out for all to see. This is an organic process. It can not be orchestrated.
Our job is to stand by the campers and support them as they attempt to understand and support each other. At Camp, they have found a safe place to express their dissatisfaction with the way things are today. They will need to find ways to build toward better tomorrows.
For the first time in our organizational history, Color Games had to be stopped. Each element of the collective emotional baggage has to be respectfully examined and understood. The evening lineup brought all the major complaints to the fore. Apologies for using racial and religious slurs, as well as decisions made in error, were painfully expressed.
In response, Color Games was suspended, and instead, we met in bunk groups to hash out individual feelings and thoughts. So many campers had skipped dinner that we had to order a big pizza delivery at about 11 p.m.
Then, we all had a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow’s schedule will not be as planned, but it is likely to be a very important day.
Wrapping Up | July 26
The repair work was addressed head-on. Both large and small groups of campers met with facilitators and Seeds of Peace staff members. A large group of Israelis and Palestinians met for three hours to share their feelings and experiences. No doubt, some of the concerns will cause future changes in the program design to allow for more dialogue time.
Campers spent the evening with their bunks, ending the day with quiet time before lights out for sleep. Tomorrow, we will be packing and taking surveys that track attitudinal shifts.