Past Events 2006
Summer Camp Promotes Youth Understanding and Respect
During the "Teaching Tolerance through English" summer camp sponsored by the U.S. government, 65 12-14 year old students and 13 teachers hailing from Serbia, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia spent two weeks in Balatonlelle, Hungary, participating in a wide array of activities designed to promote inter-ethnic understanding and empathy through the learning of English.
Hungarian, Romanian, Serbian, Roma and Slovak students shared aspects of their respective cultures, learned about the United States as a multicultural and multiethnic society and engaged in games, athletic, dramatic and artistic activities which helped bring them closer together. The teachers, under the sage guidance of Academic Specialists Lydia Stack and Mary Lou McCloskey, learned about and then immediately applied new approaches to teaching tolerance and English together.
Teachers and students received a wealth of materials, many donated by American publishers. Maria Balogh, one of the five Roma interns working at the Hungarian Public Television in the framework of a USAID-sponsored internship program through Partners Hungary, prepared a documentary film on the program to be aired by its Roma Magazine in September.
The program will be followed up by a series of school exchanges and the further development of the project's website.
This program was organized by the Regional English Language Office of the U.S. Embassy in Budapest.