The 6th International Peace Camp

From July 6 to 26 Caritas Salzburg/Austria in close collaboration with Caritas Lebanon has organised the meanwhile sixth international peace camp for needy children and youth from the entire Middle East. This camp is just one of several projects with the focus "peace and reconciliation” of Caritas Salzburg, who is coordinating all Caritas Austria Middle East relief projects. The camp shall contribute to the understanding among peoples, to help to reduce prejudice and to eliminate pre-conceived ideas, to strengthen mutual respect and tolerance, to arouse interest for other religions and cultures and finally to enable socially deprived children to benefit from real vacations.

This project takes place in another country of the region each year and each year a new nation is involved. The 97 participants of this year’s camp aged 10 to 14, coming from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Iraq, Egypt, Sudan as well as Yemen, were - together with their counsellors - excellently hosted at St. Joseph Technical School of the Lazarist near Bikfaya up in the Lebanese mountains. Caritas Salzburg has been financially supporting this school for many years.

The children who were chosen by Caritas Salzburg’s local project partners in the respective countries for participation belonged to 12 different religious denominations. Two third of the participating children were girls in order to counteract the widespread preference of boys in the region. All children involved are unprivileged: orphans, refugees or street children as well as social cases. Many of them have never been in a restaurant or in a swimming pool before this camp.

National evenings to learn about other cultures

Prepared with much enthusiasm and commitment, national evenings with traditional dances, songs and national dishes of the respective countries, were a perfect opportunity to become better acquainted with the different traditions and cultures of the Middle East. The best pieces of all national evenings were performed in front of a big public during an "international evening” at the end of the camp. Various excursions to Lebanon’s tourist sites enabled the children to learn more about their host country.

For the first time a consultant for peace and conflict resolution from the Austrian Study Centre for Peace and Reconciliation at Burg Schlaining could be enlisted to join the camp for one week in order to intensely work with the kids on the topic "peace and reconciliation”.

Who could witness the tearful good-bye scenes at the end of the camp will know that the targets of the project have surely been achieved.

The concept and character of this project is unique throughout the whole Middle East, therefore numerous other organisations from the international Caritas network have shown lively interest. Caritas Internationalis/Vatican, as well as the Caritas organisations from Germany, France, Italy, Holland, Luxemburg and the US financially contributed to this year’s camp.