Proposal #34: Interreligious Camps.
I propose that there will be a thing called "Religion Camps" in CISV.
Rationale
Even though CISV is an organisation that is not dependent on what religion you have, I think we should have a thing called religion camp. In a lot of countries in the world there are wars and murders because of religions. I think this comes from the fact that they don't know anything about the other religions, and therefore find them treatening. If people could know more and learn to accept other people's religions, many lives would be saved. CISV is
about understanding, and that is exactly what these camps are about. The camps are not to be religious or anything, but just let people learn about other religions.
The camps can be both international or national. For some camps it will be natural to have a international camp, other camps may fit better for nationals. The camps should be for youth age 14-17 and the leaders should be the same age as always, 21 or older. There can be 6 delegations (with less people it will be easier to talk about really serious things like religions)
with 2 girls, 2 boys + a leader. In this camp the staffs must make sure that at least 4 different religions or non-religions should be represented. There can be 4 staffs (for international camps internationals staffs would be great). Thew camp will have no specific theme but
learning/understanding/accepting other religions. People who are not
religious can also be in this camp.
Respectfully submitted, Emma (Norway)
9 Comments:
Hi,
This sounds to me like a Summer Camp with the theme of Religion. Maybe the easyest idea to realize this would be to ask the International Summer Camp Committee to encourage hosting one of these and paying attention to this when makeing the pool.
Bastian
I think the idea to replace nations with religions is brilliant. Why not have Buddhist delegation, a Christian delegation, a Muslim delegation, a Jewish delegation and let's say an Atheist (or Agnostic) delegation? This could work with the Village age, or Summer Camp age.
Once again, this demonstrates how limited CISV's concept of being an "international" organisation is.
The only issue I might have with the idea, is that I think any way people are "categorized", either by nation, by culture or by religion is somewhat emphasizing the differences instead of the similarities. Personally, I think, that the ultimate goal of CISV should be "inter-personal competence" - the competerence of accepting and appreciating any kind of differences there are, such as nationality, religion, sex(ual orientation), age, social background, education, etc etc. CISV's aim should therefore be to organize programmes, where personalities of greatest possible diffences unite - if you like it corny - in peace and harmony.
[As a sidenote, I would like to refer to "Seeds of Peace", a much smaller, yet well funded and marketed, organisation, that focuses on bringing people together from countries in conflict: Seedsofpeace.org.]
good idea, with poor practical application... and with the following big drawback: aren't we making more evident the religious conflict just by actually creating groups of different religions?
more practically:
- how to create a delegation with only one religion without excluding?
- how to be sure to have all the planned religions?
- until 16-17 i was not ready to talk about religion... maybe is just me... so not sure about that too.
I do agree to your comments, and think maybe the participants should be older, maybe aged 17-18. An other change I would like to come with (as this was my proposal), there should instead of coming in a delegation, they should come as individuals. I know this is not a totally concret idea, but maybe we could use some of the points in camps?
Emma
Hmmm. I would rather see a camp with individuals or delagation from different countries, where the activities or discussions can be lead towards religious subjects rather than dividing people based on their religion.
I feel there are people who feel more strongly about religion than others and some who are more sensitive to the issue than others...It is quiet a sensitive subject now, isn't it?
I dunno about others but i feel more confortable not being labeled/form a group based on my religion, i feel more confortable talking about it then.
I think I am not so crazy about the idea of having interreligious camps. I would prefer coming up with a pilot-activity for it and see how people react to it rather than launching into having a whole camp built up around this. And what better place to try this rather than SCs?
...
Cool!
So in the end we have a SC like i suggested as well with a religious theme. However I still think that having a whole camp revolving around the subject will be hard.
An activity or so, maybe. The experience with religion(our experience with our own religion is quiet limited in some cases if u think of it). Since not everybody is that religious or grew up encouraged to seak it, i find it hard to believe there would be much experience to talk about...Anyway, still i think it's my opinion. I shouldn't dismiss an idea just because i see it hard become a reality. And in the end, maybe like u said,kelly, making it a reality might be more simple than we think...
some years back I organised a NaJuWo (national JB-weekend in germany) around the theme of religion, where we invited people from different religions (quite nice sub-groups of those actually: mormons, jesus-freaks, a monk, etc.). This was a very successfull activity. On another thought: basically every religion has a youth-organisation (Forum of Europen Muslim Youth Organisations, Ecumenical Youth Council, etc.) that can act as a partner organisation. Why not a Mosaic on this theme? You can find almost every religion in every bigger city, so you don't have to go international to be inter-religious.
this could also make a good seminar, but everything would have to be very carefully planned and run because this is a very tense subject that can easily erupt into much controversey. But that is what CISV is all about, understanding, acceptance and resolution
And what about making "religion" the next IJB Year Theme ?
We amde a fantastic work last year about exclusion, but let's be honest, we mostly looked at our belly button (as we say in France).
Maybe next years themes could be wider... Marcos and Astrid, what did you plan for next IJBC ? ;-)
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