Tag Archives: peace and sport

This past week, PeacePlayers International Fellow Gunnar Hagstrom spent his time working at a “Peace and Sport Camp” in Kyrenia. He described his experiences there below.

Gunnar helps an "Andriod" and a "Lizard-Human" communicate in their new multi-cultural village.

This past week I worked as a trainer for a Peace and Sport Camp in Kyrenia, teaching kids how to play Basketball, American Football and Ultimate Frisbee, along with assisting in peace and education activities.

The camp brought 70 kids together from four different cultures: Greeks, Greek-Cypriots, Turks and Turkish-Cypriots. The kids, whose ages ranged from 13 to 17, came together to spend a week living, playing sports, developing multi-cultural villages and – perhaps most importantly – playing in the pool with each other.

The main focus of the camp was the creation of fictional multi-cultural villages, where groups of kids could use their imagination to create a new kind of community. These villages could be anywhere in the universe, with any type of people, who could create their own government, education system, economic structure, and so on. The goal of the village was to show how groups of people can break down stereotypes between each other and find a common thread that will allow them to live together in peace. The kids then presented their village to others through film, dance, political debate and creative writing.

I happened to be a part of the village “Liberta,” which was located on a space station and had four different tribes living there: the Androids, the Reptile-Humans, the Angels and the Elves. To present Liberta we put together a film with the help of trainer Ivan Charalambous; each kid in the group had a responsibility to either be an actor/actress, costume designer, set designer, or production assistant. It was unbelievable to see how the kids all worked together – Greeks face-painting Turks, Turkish-Cypriots holding hands with Greek-Cypriots as they marched down an aisle. (The multi-cultural village film will be posted on next week’s blog.)

The entire experience was very moving. On the first day of camp all the kids sat at their own respective tables, with no one talking to one another, but by Day 7, it was a different story. As the Greeks and Greek-Cypriots rode on a bus away from Kyrenia, there was a line of Turkish-Cypriots and Turks saying goodbye and throwing water at the bus (a Turkish tradition) in hope that their new friends would soon return.