While Lirun is off sleeping aside volcanoes and protecting his surfboard from mischevious monkeys, I've taken an inpromptu trip to Toronto to spend time with my family. Toronto, Canada is a pretty multicultural city where the people, like many of their american neighbours, are outwardly proactive and tend to get involved with causes of concern; even those beyond the borders. Since Canada is thought of as a cultural mosaic it follows that canadians would want to preserve cultural differances while at the same time create opportunities to bridge those differances so that a common peace can be appreciated and lives can just be lived. haha, It's also just way too cold to waste energy on strife.
Anyway, after being home for a few days, I realized just how many events are being put on by organizations, religious and cultural groups in the toronto region that are focused around peace in the middle east. It's beautiful to see, especially since the final statement coming out of the recent G8 meeting, made by the Japanese PM, was one of hopeful reconciliation between israel and it's neighbours. ( This is worth another post to follow ;-)
One of the cooler events that I came across was one called kids for peace and it's an interfaith education for peace initiative that takes 12 kids ( 4 muslim, 4 jewish, 4 christian) from the Galilee, Israel, and 12 kids from the three faiths in Toronto, Canada, and puts them through a pre-program with their families in the Galilee that involves dialogue and group focused events, then sends the kids together to a summer camp set up just for them in the South Toronto region. After the camp they have co-existance follow up programming with their families for the next 8 months and an option to continue in the program beyond those initial 8 months. Camp is always super popular and a great way to get kids forgetting about the political soup that they grow up in and seeing each other's possibilities as friends, neighbours and members of their own communities. I loved camp when I was a kid and remember how it didn't matter what you wore or where you came from as long as you wanted to be there and everybody always came out of the 8 weeks with amazingly close friendships that tended to last. The kids for peace program is a bit similar to seeds of peace but it has a longer pre and post camp componant that involves the entire family and canadian pen-pals.
Take a peek at the photo essay linked to the site:
[kids4peace.ca]
I can hardly imagine a better way to replant healthy community roots in the Galilee.