Peacecamp 2007

I am Evelyn. I am Israeli , I am Austrian, I am Jewish, I am an adult, I am a mother, I am a wife, I am a citizen and am now living in Vienna.
I love the sea, the sun, warm weather, I love my husband, my daughter Lia, I love Israel, I love Vienna, I love my job and I love young people.
I have organized a number of peacecamps since 2004 with varying partners from Jewish and Palestinian neigbourhoods in Israel and from European countries - Slovenia, Hungary and Austria.
I was always concerned about wars, terror, about the Holocaust and all the man-made catastrophies that people have brought upon themselves in the course of human history. When I was a child, I used to dream about a world in which there would be no borders between the countries, in which people would be free to move about the globe and live wherever they wanted and pleased. I was always asking my parents and teachers why there were wars and how one could abolish them, but the adults I was asking did not know the answers. When I became an adult, I decided that I should ask kids rather than adults, because wars are made by adults and maybe the young would know how to make peace.
I often thought that there is so much hatred and violence in the world because our parents and grandparents have been victims of wars, terror, violence and injustice and are so full with resentment and anger and pass it on to their children; when these children become adults they will also be ready to hate and to kill, just as their parents, and when we ask them why they do this, they will say that they are only taking revenge for what was done to their parents or grandparents.
I therefore decided to offer young people of different cultural background an opportunity to meet and talk and learn about one another, and make their own mind about things that they were told by the grown ups.
I actually believe that young people are sometimes more clever, more creative and more inventive than grown up people. Maybe they can find the answers to the questions that the grown ups are unable to answer or even to ask.

I am therefore very much looking forward to
peacecamp 2007.

cu soon,
Evelyn
bohmerATutanet.at