CHILDREN'S INTERNATIONAL SUMMER VILLAGES INC - SMOKY MOUNTAIN CHAPTER

CISV, Inc. is a global organization dedicated to educating and inspiring for peace through building inter-cultural friendship, cooperation, and understanding. We aim to help our participants develop the skills they need to become informed, responsible, and active global citizens who make a difference in their communities and the world. The glue that underpins all of our programmes is friendship, in line with our founding belief that peace is possible through friendship and mutual understanding. We are striving as a local chapter to be a visible, active youth peace organization by increasing involvement in our community.

CISV accomplishes its goals through age-appropriate, research-based games, activities and evaluations within the setting of multi-week camps attended by participants from all around the world. All activities have as their underlying theme our five core values: friendship, inclusiveness, enthusiasm, engagement, and cooperation.

CISV, Inc.'s chief assets are the volunteers from its 60 member nations who for six decades have made the dream of peace through friendship come alive for thousands of children and youth. Each year, these volunteers plan, staff, fund and execute some 200 multi-week camps throughout the world, bringing to these efforts their individual expertise from a broad range of fields and backgrounds.

CISV is an educational organization that is working within the greater culture to transform attitudes and actions. By raising awareness of injustice, prejudice, and ecological abuse that exist within our own culture and then providing opportunities to turn that awareness into action, CISV works with its youth to become instruments of change. Each summer, our 11 year olds participate in “Rich/Poor Day" that allows them to experience inequalities that exist within society, “Handicap Day" that has them live with a created disability for a few hours, and a cultural stereotype activity where they are challenged by other countries' stereotypes of the United States. By experiencing these problems, discussing what it is like to experience them, and then discussing where they can see such problems in their local communities, our 11 year olds' views of their lives and their communities are transformed. All CISV programs are designed to provide experiential learning activities that are age-appropriate and based on our four content areas of diversity, human rights, conflict and resolution, and sustainable development.