FAMILY TIES

Three generations linked to CISV

By JoAnn Jones

news@vindy.com

Twelve-year-old Maleck Saleh of Canfield has learned at a young age how to communicate well — with kids his own age who don’t speak English.

Maleck, as part of the Children’s International Summer Villages program, spent a month in 2008 in Spain with children of 11 other countries, including Lebanon, Mexico and Germany.

“I could see into the eyes of others,” Maleck said. “They don’t understand you, and you don’t understand them. But everyone in the world can talk to each other without speaking.”

“It’s a very good program,” he added. “We learn to understand and help one another and step in and do what’s right. We also try a lot of food we’ve never had before — something different every night.”

Maleck, a seventh-grader at Canfield Village Middle School, is a third-generation participant in the CISV program, one geared toward 11-year-olds. The others in his family who have been involved are his grandmother, Judy Strawderman; his mother, Heidi; his aunt, Holly; and his older brother, Aly.

Jad, Maleck’s 10-year-old brother who is in fifth grade at the middle school, will go to Montreal in July with a CISV delegation, leaving his parents for the first time.

“I’m a bit nervous,” Jad said. “But I’ll have my birthday during camp on July 13, so that will be fun. One of my friends from Canfield is going, too.”

The boys’ father, Ayman Saleh, a physician, has also played a role in the family’s CISV involvement.

“A village has a doctor ‘on call’ or a nurse, if possible,” Heidi said. “He has volunteered for a weekend for a local camp. He has also come home to find kids of all nationalities [from the program], and he’s fine with that,” Heidi said. “He never knows who’s going to be here.”

Heidi, although in the middle generation, was the first family member to become interested in the camp program, which is held by host CISV chapters around the world every summer. Then she got her mother involved.

“When I was in the fifth grade, some kids came into school and told us about the program,” Heidi said. “It sounded good so I told my parents, who found out it was a fairly well-known and established program.”

Heidi, Holly and their parents learned the core idea of the program was that peace is attainable if people can learn to live together.

That was 1977, the year Heidi was part of a 12-country delegation in Washington, D.C. She went to Finland two years later for an Interchange program, a program for 12- to 15-year-olds that enables young people to live as family members of host families. That same year, Heidi’s mother, who had become the local CISV chapter president, led an Interchange to Kitchener, Ontario.

“In an Interchange, the children are paired home to home,” said Strawderman, now of Englewood, Fla. “The hardest thing for a parent is to sign responsibility over legally to someone else, but it’s such a wonderful opportunity for the kids and the adults.”

“Children do, however, get a wider vision with the villages [than the Interchange] with many different languages, customs and costumes,” she added.

Strawderman’s grandson, Aly, spent a month in Gorizia, Italy, in 2006 as an 11-year-old.

“Kids understood each other in spite of the language barrier,” Aly said. “It wasn’t an issue. Give it a week, you’re acquainted and start to pal around.”

“There were cultures I’d never really experienced, though,” he said. “The Japanese were the only Eastern country there.”

Aly, a sophomore at Canfield High School and a year-round soccer player, said he arrived in Italy right after the country had won the World Cup. The national pride evident for Italy’s soccer team was amazing, he said.

“You just can’t compare that national pride I saw,” he said. “We traded items we’d brought from home on the very last day we were there. I traded a U.S. flag. It meant so much to the other kids.”

Aly was in a Children’s Village at the time of the 2006 Lebanese-Israeli conflict. The four Lebanese students set to go to Italy never made it because they couldn’t get out of their country. That definitely had an impact on the program, he said.

“There were four fewer people,” Aly said. “Some of their things had already been shipped to the Village. This was a peace program, and politics and war interfered with it. Now I realize the impact it [the missing Lebanese delegation] had on me as a person.”

Heidi, an active participant in the Youngstown-Cleveland Northeast Ohio Chapter of CISV, said her experiences, along with technology such as e-mail and Facebook, have helped her find and stay in touch with CISV participants she met 33 years ago.

“CISV has an international link where you can get in touch with friends from the Village you attended,” she said. “I got in touch with two from Finland, and within 12 hours, we were e-mailing. We haven’t had contact since we were 11.”

Both of her sons who attended Villages kept in touch with friends for a while, but Maleck said they “sometimes lose touch” as he did with his friend Paco from Mexico.

Heidi helps the local chapter with raising funds that are used to host a Village in Northeast Ohio. The Youngstown- Cleveland chapter will host one in 2011.

“The host chapter is responsible for all food, lodging and insurance,” she said. “The staff is also paid. It costs about $40,000 to host a Village.”

“Every three years, we host a Village in Youngstown,” she continued. “In the past, we’ve held them at YSU, Joseph Badger Meadows Camp and St. Joseph the Provider Catholic School in Campbell.”

Recently the chapter hosted its annual “Passport to Peace” gala and reverse raffle at the Davis Center in Mill Creek Park. Heidi said the gala is one of the group’s major fundraisers.

“Our fundraising includes a scholarship fund that people can donate directly to,” she said. “Usually, we give a $200 scholarship to help with expenses, but one time we raised the entire amount to send a boy to Norway.”

Heidi said the Salehs are not the only family in the area who has been involved with CISV for three generations. She said 16-year-old Daniel Persson of Liberty will be a junior counselor at one of the Villages for 11-year-olds this summer.

“His mom moved to Sweden and married over there later after being involved in the program,” she said.

Although in the past the Youngstown-Cleveland chapter has sent more than one delegation to various venues in the summer, this year it will send only one.

“The number of children who try out for the program has changed a lot,” she said. “It’s partially because of the economy and partly because of world events, I think.”

“These kids we’re sending are our ambassadors,” she added. “We want kids who are friendly, outgoing and willing to learn.”