Report from the Intercultural Summer Camp

Report by Garrett Mullan, Lorraine Kearns and Florentyna Syperek,After months of preparations, we are delighted to let you all know that the first Show Racism the Red Card Intercultural Summer Camp has started.  Our team of volunteers includes visitors from as far afield as the US, Russia and Slovenia.  The young people attending our camp are aged 11-16 and come from Cork Derry, Donegal, Dublin, Leitrim, and Wicklow.  Some are from Irish backgrounds and others are from Polish, South African, Iranian, Kurdish, Japanese and Ukrainian.For many young people, this was the first time away from their families.  We asked them about their fears and chief among them were issues such as bullying, fighting, being lonely and one was afraid of being stung by a wasp.  Another was afraid that there might not be food.  Others feared they might get sick and one even feared that he might die.  Another feared that she would miss her nanny.Happily at this stage, we believe all the young people are happy here. They have participated in many activities. On the first night, Monday after agreeing a group contract we had a ceili.  Lorraine Kearns from Dublin said about the ceili that: ‘it was deadly’.  Florentyna Syperek from Derry said: ‘it was a very good idea because it brought people together’.After a nights sleep, the camp was up early for morning activities beginning at 8:30am.  We all went for a walk to a local pier.  We did not jump off this pier, so don’t worry.  After breakfast the camp split into two groups.  We did languages of Esperanto and Spanish and also Indian dancing and learned to sing a Slovenian song about two owls getting married. In the afternoon, group 1 went coasteering which did actually involve jumping off cliffs, piers and rocks.  Groups 2 did team games.  They built tents and had lots of fun.   After dinner we had country presentations from our Russian volunteers and also our volunteers from Slovenia when we learned all about their countries. About the country presentations Florentyna said that the presentations were entertaining and educational.  The country presentations finished at 8:30pm and then there was a world cup disco where we had disco dancing and those who wanted to watch Holland and Uruguay were able to see the game.Here are our pictures and you can see more on http://www.flickr.com/photos/showracismtheredcard/