SED Student Helps Bring Israeli, Palestinian Youth Together

BU Today

Just about everyone has tossed around a Frisbee for fun. Dana Dunwoody is doing it for peace. At a summer camp in an Israeli desert, she is using the flying discs to bring together Israeli and Palestinian youth—and maybe change the world, one toss at time.
“As youths, we get inundated with information about who we are and what our cultures are, and when there’s a lot of violence and hostility going on, there’s a lot of misinterpretation,” says Dunwoody (SED’19), a doctoral candidate in applied human development. “To be able to come together and realize, I can have a say in changing that narrative, is a very empowering experience.”
This is Dunwoody’s second stint as a volunteer counselor at the Ultimate Peace camp. Using the grounds of an Israeli boarding school for a week each summer since 2007, the organization strives to build ties between Israeli and West Bank youths. It does that with Ultimate, a game that’s extremely competitive, but depends heavily on teamwork and sportsmanship. The 200 or so 10-to-16-year-old campers come for the hours of practice and games each day. They have some fun away from the burdens of daily life in that conflict-wracked corner of the world, and if things go the way they are supposed to go, they begin to see one another differently.
“We encourage conversation and sharing of culture,” says Dunwoody, who has a bachelor’s in psychology from Temple University and a master’s in athletic counseling from Springfield College. “We have a lot of different activities the kids do together to create safe spaces to share their identities and explore other cultures.”
Dunwoody uses her skills as an educator and athletic coach to help campers find ways to get along.
Mostly, though, there is ultimate.
Flying-disc sports are a lot more organized than they were in ...

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