“We come into the classroom and we kind of help bridge those gaps and Peace Camp specifically allows kids to come and learn very different concepts,” Walters said.
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She started volunteering about five years ago when she was in high school and was amazed at how much she didn’t know about the place she called home.
“I grew up on the northside of town; everything was just very different. I just felt very sheltered and honestly embarrassed I didn’t know what was going on, the needs my community had,” Walters said.
About 160 kids and at least 40 volunteers are participated in the 32nd camp held last week. Many were returning campers like nine-year-old Brayden Keith. He has lost count of how long he has been attending but can recall how he felt on the first day.
“I was nervous cause a couple of my friends weren’t going to be there and I was going to meet new people,” he said. “I was going to have like a new teacher to meet and I was just scared because I didn’t know how this was going to go.”
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Brayden admitted he was shy on the first day. That changed on the second day because he was having fun. The camp has helped him he said.
“It’s helped me a lot because I have gotten into fights sometimes and sometimes I want to use my hands to fight but I know that’s wrong and Peace Camp helps me with that,” he said. “It teaches me a lot about like how to stand up to bullies and not to use my hands to fight.”
Each day, students are taught something new like using their hands for helping not hurting and using their ears for listening. Training stressed looking directly at the speaker and not interrupting.
“The end of the week they learn how to be responsible for their own actions and their own attitude,” Walters said.
The camp also offers mediation. It is a very peaceful way of trying to listen to each other and come up with your own solutions to a problem, said Nancy Flinchbaugh, Springfield’s fair housing/mediation coordinator .
“We have found you know if people sit down and really listen to each other, they do resolve their problems and they do come up with a solution they have chosen and that does work,” Flinchbaugh said.
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