Anytown Texas: Students Learn About Themselves, Others at Camp

By John Gutierrez-Mier, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas

Jun. 5–MIDLOTHIAN — At camp last week, Angel Maldonado expected to have a frank talk about immigration.

After all, the Anytown Texas Camp is designed to help teenagers improve several qualities, including self-esteem and leadership skills.

The camp, hosted by the Fort Worth-Tarrant County region of the National Conference for Community and Justice, isn’t like most other camps. The 50 teenagers selected for the weeklong experience are handpicked and come from different cultures, races, religions and economic backgrounds.

This year’s crop came from all parts of Tarrant County, including Grapevine, Keller, Fort Worth and Arlington.

Upon their arrival last week at the Hoblitzelle campground near Midlothian, they were immediately placed in groups in which very few of their peers looked like them.

African-Americans, Anglos, Hispanics and Asian-Americans were mixed together. Rich and working class mingled. Public school students befriended students from private institutions.

Emily Trantham, executive director of the local justice conference, who organized the first camp 25 years ago, said Anytown was developed to help break down stereotypes, prejudice, bias and bigotry.

Those goals, she explained, are the core mission of the group, which was founded in 1927 as the National Conference for Christians and Jews. Ten years ago, the organization changed its name to better reflect its goals and the nation’s changing racial makeup.

Maldonado, an upcoming senior at Trimble Tech High School in Fort Worth, said many of his non-Hispanic peers at camp were eager to learn what he and other Hispanics thought about the immigration issue being debated in Congress.

“We talked about it, but we didn’t have an easy answers,” said Maldonado, who helped organize some of the recent student protests.

In March, students from numerous schools in Tarrant County staged walkouts in opposition to punitive immigration reform supported by the U.S. House of Representatives.

Alisha Caliman, an upcoming senior at the Oak Ridge School in Arlington, said the frank discussion among the groups helped dispel several stereotypes she didn’t know she had.

“I used to wonder if all Mexican-Americans were in the country illegally,” said Caliman, 16, who is African-American.

Johnny Pham, who attended the camp in 2002 as a student at Martin High School in Arlington, was there as a counselor this year.

He recalled his own time at the camp, which he credits with changing him from a shy teenager to a confident individual.

“When I was younger, I felt that I didn’t fit anywhere,” said Pham, whose parents are Vietnamese immigrants. “Anytown gave me the opportunity to meet other teens from different backgrounds.”

Pham, a pre-medical student at the University of Texas at Austin, said the recent delegates weren’t too different from when he attended.

Chuck Hoffman, the Fort Worth school district’s executive director of student services and the volunteer co-director of the camp, first volunteered as an adult adviser in 1986.

He said he believes that the camp experience hasn’t changed much but that delegates now have access to information they didn’t have 20 years ago.

This year most of the campers had cellphones. Some took laptops.

Midway through the camp, the delegates celebrated Cultural Night.

That’s a time where each teen chooses an ethnic or racial group that best represents them, Trantham explained. The groups then share a little history with their peers. A half dozen delegates presented “A journey through Judaism.”

They recited the Kaddish, the Jewish mourner’s prayer. They then pulled out yellow Stars of David and fastened them to their shirts.

“Millions of Jewish men, women and children were killed during the Holocaust,” they explained.

The students watched the short presentation, then joined the group in the hora, a traditional Jewish dance.

Heather Wooley, who will be a senior at Grapevine High School, said she hoped to leave with a better understanding of herself and others.

“I’ve heard people say that the United States is a big melting pot,” she said. “It definitely is.”

IN THE KNOW

To know more

For more information on the National Conference for Community and Justice, call 817-332-3271.

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John Gutierrez-Mier, (817) 390-7155 jmier@star-telegram.com

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Copyright (c) 2006, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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