Camp for Diverse Teens Seeks Unity

They leave today as a diverse multiethnic, multiracial group of young adults. With any luck, when the 100 teens return from camp a week later, they will consider one another brothers and sisters. For six intense days, the teens--about a fifth of them from Valley high schools--will role-play, dispel stereotypes and confront their own prejudices at the Brotherhood-Sisterhood Camp, sponsored by the nonsectarian National Conference, formerly the National Conference of Christians and Jews.

“The primary goal of the camp--[because] you can’t change society in a week--is to enable the kids as individuals to bring back home a sense of who they are and a better sense of understanding and respect of other ethnicities and racial groups and for the other gender as well,” said Jerry Freedman Habush, a spokesman for the human relations group.

The teens will address issues of individual and institutional racism, prejudice, homophobia, anti-immigrant sentiment and sexism in their own schools and communities. The youngsters will work in small diverse groups and will also talk in interracial groups that serve as safe havens.