The 5th International Summer Camp

The 2004 camp took once again place in Egypt whereby the children had spent the first two weeks in Alexandria and another week in Cairo.
A premiere in 2004 was the participation of a Libyan group, in addition Sudan was represented as its own nation (in the past Sudanese children had participated in the programme as part of the Egyptian delegation). By virtue of the chaotic situation in Iraq, and the refusal of both Jordanian and Lebanese governments to issue travel documents for Iraqi refugee children who live in these countries, unfortunately, there was no Iraqi delegation represented at the 2004 camp. In 2005 the camp will again take place in Lebanon.

Being unique in the MONA region, the local partners in the region - with whom we co-operate very well - have great interest in this campaign: Caritas Egypt (represented since 1999 and 2001 and again the host in 2004), Caritas Jordan (represented in 2001 and 2002, and host of the 2002 camp) and Caritas Lebanon (Najla Tabet Chahda, director of the "Migrants Centre” of Caritas Lebanon, who will be our partner ganisation in 2005, sets up the contacts with the Palestinian partners in Lebanon and supports the organisational preparations on a regional level).

CI President Msgr. Fouad El-Hage and Claudette Habesch, President of Caritas MONA; as well as representatives of the local Caritas organisations (Magdy Ga-ras/Caritas Egypt, Jamal Hattar/Caritas Jordan, Father Elie Madi/Caritas Lebanon, have shown their interest and their support when visiting the camps in the past.
Great interest in this programme is also shown by several convents who regularly provide Sisters for preparation work as well as for active participation in the camps (as for example in the past the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent of Paul, the Sisters of Charity from Besançon, the Franciscans, the Emphremite Sisters, the Jesus Christ Community,…), which is of course a valuable help and a great enrichment.

The goals of the campaign remained always the same, and have even gained significance since the terrible incident of September 11, 2001:

 to contribute to the understanding among peoples
 to eliminate preconceived ideas
 to strengthen mutual respect and tolerance
 to arouse interest in different religions and cultures
 to enable socially deprived children (orphans, refugee children, handi-capped,…) to benefit from vacations free of worries

It may be worth mentioning that there is another similar programme with equal goal on a national basis, namely in Lebanon. The "Migrants Centre” of Caritas Lebanon will be organising also this year a summer camp for Lebanese children and refugee children from Palestine and Iraq living in Lebanon, in co-operation with the convent of the Sisters of Charity - and with the financial support of Caritas Salzburg.

By virtue of the uniqueness and variety of the international Caritas summer camp (participants of different religions and with different social backgrounds, some of them being problematic, street kids, …) it has proven that a special training before the start of the camp for the group leaders as well as for other counsellors is very important and helpful - this was done through "Tolerance training for camp counsellors”.  The training was performed in 2002  by ICMC ("International Catholic Migration Commission”) together with the "Migrants Centre” of Caritas Lebanon, financed by CRS. In addition, almost all group leaders have participated in special courses (CE-MEAL, YMCA, …). Another advantage is that the team of counsellors has remained the same to a large extent, so that the counsellors from the different countries know each others very well and have gained large experience.

Though, this campaign has naturally always been a peace project in the past, this emphasis shall become more clearer and shall already be evident by the name. For this reason the camp shall run under the designation "International Caritas Peace Camp”, and this focus is intended to be represented outward. This implicates a the-matically more intensive consideration of the peace topic during the camp. For this purpose we could win a speaker of the Austrian Study Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution from Burg Schlaining, who will be joining the camp for one week and work with the children on that topic. The Lebanese core team of the camp will in addition attend a two day’s seminar on this subject, organised by Caritas Lebanon, immedi-ately before the beginning of the camp.