August 31, 2018
Camp Cultural Leadership was an influential experience. I learned about social justice issues and how they affected people, African American and Jewish history, and made great new friends.
Camp Cultural Leadership is the 3 week camp version of the high school program, Cultural Leadership. During camp we studied African American and Jewish history, and their relationship.
The first week of camp we learned about African American history and social justice. We visited North Campus in North City where we did community beautification in the area. Later on, that Friday we used our Metro GO passes visited The Missouri History Museum and watched a performance by Teens Make History called “Solidarity and Civil rights”.
The next week was all about Jewish history and culture. We had our first overnight retreat at Kol Rinah, a Jewish synagogue. Where we had a speaker talk to us about the legs of oppression, stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination and privilege. On our last week we studied how African American and Jewish Culture were related. Like how both African American and Jewish people were oppressed in the past. We had our final overnight trip to Chicago. In Chicago we visited two black owned tourist attractions, Uncle Remus, and the DuSable Museum. For our first meal in Chicago we went to Uncle Remus, one of the best fried chicken places in Chicago. Then we visited The Dusable Museum of African American history, which was full of great information about important Black people in history.
As we wrapped up the final week of camp we each made newsletter entries for our newsletter and speeches to give for our final presentation. On the last day of camp we finished our speeches and gave a presentation about what we had learned, the friends we made, and how great our experience was at camp. I had a great time at Camp Cultural Leadership and would urge others to go.