Gregory Freeman: 'Anytown' Opens Eyes And Minds. 8/22/1993

Headline: `ANYTOWN' OPENS EYES AND MINDS
Reporter: By Gregory Freeman

Publication: ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Last Printed: Sun., Aug. 22, 1993
Section: WAR PAGE, Page: 4B, Edition: FIVE STAR

WHEN KEVIN WATTS was 18, he participated in Anytown, U.S.A. - a 34-year-old program of the National Conference of Christians and Jews.
   It changed his life. "It taught me so much, " said Watts, now 22. "I learned a lot about the subtle prejudices that we all have, how to recognize those prejudices and how to deal with them.
   "The program hit me so hard that I just carry with me everything I learned."
   In fact, it brought Watts to St. Louis from his hometown of Memphis last week so he could serve as a counselor for the program. This is his sixth Anytown session.
   "I got so much out of it that I want everyone who can to get as much out of it as they can, " he said, barely able to contain his enthusiasm.

Anytown U.S.A. is a weeklong program designed to teach young people to appreciate diversity. The multicultural group of participants - who range in age from 16 to 18 - camp together for a week, learning to live with people who are different from themselves. They participate in a variety of exercises set up to make them relax and understand one another better.

For example, one group of teens participated in a storytelling session. Each participant was asked to write a paragraph about his or her earliest memories. After that was done, each acted out those memories.
   Afterward, the students talked with Millicent Rubin, the adult adviser who led the group. "We have many feelings in our lives, " she said. "When we tell these stories, what happens?"
   One youngster said she felt more relaxed after telling her story and listening to others.
   Then, as if a light bulb had gone on above his head, Lindbergh High School student Tony Vetterott blurted out: "Even though we're different, these things show that we're one and the same. A lot of these things we talked about could have happened to anybody. We're getting comfortable enough with one another to share these stories with one another."
   Rubin said later that Vetterott picked up on the exercise's purpose. "As we start feeling safe, we start feeling comfortable enough to tell our stories, stories that might include feelings of rejection, of pain, of racism, of sexism, " she said. "It works."

The youngsters camped together last week at Camp Wyman in Eureka. This was the second year for Anytown in the St. Louis area.

Ron Jackson, regional director of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, explained that a big part of the program is getting people to think. "We're trying to get them to think about issues of difference in ways they haven't thought of before and to interact with people they haven't interacted with people as well as with people who are like them, " Jackson said.
"Part of what we do is to get people to feel good about themselves. The better we feel about ourselves, the more likely we are to feel good about other people."

During one planning session, Watts, along with Washington University students Jarrod Schwartz and Tara Raju, discussed plans for a particular exercise. The plans were for participants who defined themselves as part of certain groups - African-Americans, women, children of working-class parents, Asian-Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans - to form themselves into groups, one by one, as someone read a paragraph or so about the problems that that particular group faces. They also considered adding males under 6 feet tall.
   As the students moved back and forth from group to group, Schwartz and Raju figured, they began to understand that people often fit into more than one category and that we often have more in common than we realize.
   "The idea, " said Schwartz, "is that sometimes you may seem isolated, but the people across from you are often your allies and you don't realize it."
   The teen-agers also had a variety of discussions on such issues as interracial dating, AIDS and abortion. "These conversations sometimes get pretty heated, " Jackson said.

Toward the end of the week, the students planned to brainstorm what they would do with their newfound knowledge and how they would take it back to others.
"We hope to do follow-ups over the course of the year to see how they're doing, " Jackson said. "We also want to teach some of them who want to become facilitators for other sessions."

Spanning the rainbows of color, ethnicity and religion, the participants in Anytown learned an important lesson - that reaching out to other groups does not mean ignoring or betraying your own group.
It's a lesson a good number of adults could afford to learn.

Daniel Schesch - Webweaver

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