peacecamp 2014

Peacecamp is definitely an experience. But ‘experience’ is such a loose term in my opinion. You can have so many kinds of experiences that I don’t even want to start listing them. So what kind of an experience was Peacecamp?
First of all it was sad, sometimes even mortifying. These feeling occurred to me when I realized that the horrible things you read about wars in history books still happen today. Now obviously I knew about the conflict in Israel, I knew how terrible a war can be but I never really thought about the people who have to live through said wars. Now that I met quite a few of them, from both sides of the conflict, it really opened my eyes. I realized war isn’t just horrible for the fact that people die, and that the fact that who’s right and wrong isn’t decided justly, but by force. It’s also awful for the people that have to fear for their own and their loved one’s lives and personal freedom every day.
Secondly, it was hard. When someone from the outside looks at any conflict, they only look at facts, numbers and so on. And I was the same with the Arab-Jewish conflict for example. Now I have met people who are emotionally connected to the conflict, and I now know how hard it is to solve these problems. There are so many new and old emotions, but all of them strong, that while for me it’s easy to say “Let’s just try to calm down and come to an agreement”, for the people involved, this can be an unbelievably hard thing, as far as I could tell.
Obviously Peacecamp wasn’t just being serious and sad all the time. It also was a tremendous amount of fun. It actually was a little surprising to me to see people arguing and disagreeing one minute, and a few hours later having an amazing time and making friends, like nothing has happened. This is probably thanks to the fantastic team that makes Peacecamp a reality every year. They helped us bond and have a good time with all kinds of activities, while still leaving enough time and opportunity to discuss the important and serious matters Peacecamp exists for. These programmes ranged from simple team building exercises you could see at any company’s team building project, to various rhythm games and acting performances, which later became the ‘show4peace’.
I have taken many things home from Peacecamp, and I hope to keep all of them throughout my life. I took home frienships, new words from different languages, most of them I still can’t pronounce, bits of different cultures, awesome songs and dances, and the list could go on. Still, the most important part for me is that I’ve been reassured, that there are a lot of people around the globe who thrive for peace, and if we all work hard, we could actually make a change.
I would like to deeply thank everyone involved, both the participants and the team, for the colourful and eventful experience that Peacecamp was for me.

Well for me peacecamp started weeks before the actual camp. I won’t lie I was scared of it a lot, because as usual I overthought things that how would I act once I get there.
But all of my worries were blown away the moment we started our first session at Lackenhof. I met the most amazing people there and gained more experiences that I could get from anywhere else. I heard stories I have never heard before and problems I never had to face before.
At our first Large Group session I thought ”What a horrible world we live in” but then when we had our free time and we talked with each other I realized, it’s not that bad, we can change it. If it’s these people they can do it.
I’m not that type of charismatic leader, who can spoke for her rights, but I met people there who are and I believe I can become one of them if I stick to them.
The fun games we played with Lucas and AnnPhie made me realize that it doesn’t matter where we come from because we can work together as one if we want to.
Since the camp if I have a chance I always try to bring the message of it to the people I meet I try to make them understand how unimportant is our nationality and that it doesn’t make you worth more or less.
I really hope that this peacecamp will never end in our heart and that we won’t ever forget about each other. I hope that we can meet again sometimes in the best possible future.

(Lilla)

I was really excited but also scared of peacecamp. I didn’t have any idea what to expect. On the first day I felt a little bit strange in that company but it quickly changed. Everybody was so open and nice, so all my bad feelings flew away. During the camp I was really-really tired because of the programs, but after all it was totally worth. I’ve learned a lot about other cultures, personality, the Middle East and politics and I’ve never seen before this kind of deep feelings on other’s face. I have lots of eternal memories from the camp and I would advise to participate to everyone.

(Ákos)