Free Write:
A Diverse Community
In addition to the individual growth I experienced at camp. It also gave me a community to belong to which was unlike anything I had ever experienced. While at camp, you have life-changing conversations and open up to the other delegates about very personal experiences. Inevitably you become close friends with the other delegates who originally started out as strangers.
One of the core strategies of the camp is to bring together delegates from a variety of different backgrounds. So I ended up building close relationships with people who I would have otherwise not have had the opportunity to meet. It was a completely different setting than I was used to. Often times high school, work, and even church I was only exposed to people of a similar background than me. Anytown was the first time I connected with like-minded people who came from different backgrounds.
It only helped enrich the experience and added depth to our conversations. I was able to learn how other races and genders experienced prejudice from those who felt it first hand. It deepened my compassion for those groups even more since I was able to put faces to the struggle. My main objective during this internship is to enrich the experience for current delegates.
It sounds like you are enjoying this experience. I went through a similar experience a few years ago when I moved away from Los Angeles to come to ASU. All my like I lived surrounded with people who were to some extent very similar to me, it wasn’t until I came to Arizona that I started talking to people from very different backgrounds. It is always very interesting how sometimes you can relate to complete strangers even though sometimes your lives have very little in common, I think interacting with other people is a great way to grow and get different perspective on live and learn to appreciate what we have.
ReplyDeleteCrispin,
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you enjoyed the experience. Often times we unknowingly surround our self with people that are of our background and have been to similar life experience, negating us the opportunity to experience what others outside of our own social circle experience in life. When speaking to others I can always tell those that have never left their comfort zone because they immediately begin to relate everything through their own experience and cannot understand that peoples experiences are not always the same to theirs. I once had a discussion with someone that believed that those children participating in sport activity have higher confidence and moral values. While I agreed with him that sports are good for building confidence and teaching kids team work, I also told him that not everyone's experience in sports was the same. He argued that in soccer there are no social economical classes and that all players regardless of background are equal. What he could not understand was that some neighborhoods do not have the typical middle-class sports experience, in which you register for a youth league and play in well-lit, relatively clean parks. He failed to understand that for those kids in low income neighborhood playing soccer in a drug infested park or empty lots the soccer experience was much different. That is not to say that they cannot gain confidence through the sport but to argue that their social economic background does not change the sport experience is a lack of understanding of others experience. Anyways I am glad that you had the chance to share your experience with people you might not have done so had it not been for this camp. I look forward to reading more about your experience.