Atlanta . . . The King Center will hold the 2013 “N.O.W. (Nonviolence Opportunity Watch) Encounter: Kingian Nonviolence in Action” summer camping session on its campus from June 17-21 for 120 participants, including 94 students ages 13-18 and 30 adult chaperones, it was announced today. The King Center will teach participants techniques for leveraging Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s philosophy of nonviolence to resolve conflicts in their daily lives and empower them to serve as ‘ambassadors’ for nonviolent social change.
The participants enrolled in the first session of the N.O.W. Encounter camp at The King Center’s Freedom Hall Complex will include: 31 youth and adults from New Mexico; 48 people from Detroit; 3 from South Carolina and 38 metro Atlanta Area. In addition to the first session, which is filled up, the second session, slated for July 15-17, will include 8 youth from Cyprus.
In announcing the 2013 camp, King Center C.E.O. Bernice A. King explained “Our 2012 N.O.W. Encounter Camp experience was a remarkable success, which evoked rave reviews from participants, their parents and chaperones. The 2013 N.O.W. Camp will provide an action-packed, fun-filled and life-changing week, which will challenge and engage young people to use the power of nonviolence to help fulfill my father’s dream.”
Ms. King said that the youth attending the camp will “learn how to defuse conflicts to prevent verbal, mental or physical violence in their homes, schools and communities.” She added that they will learn specific techniques for “preventing bullying and for creating nonviolent ‘zones’ in their schools and communities.” The camping program will teach leadership skills that enable young people to think and not react before reacting violently. “It will be a fantastic opportunity for young people to experience an amazing week of education, inspiration and entertainment,” said Ms. King
In addition, there will be a day-long bus tour to sites of historical relevance to Dr. King’s leadership and the American Civil Rights Movement in Montgomery and Birmingham, Alabama. Adult chaperones will also receive an orientation and education from camp staff, not only to supervise the youth during the camp session, but also to provide encouragement to the youth to continue their leadership as ‘ambassadors’ of Kingian nonviolence into the future.
The N.O.W. Encounter Camp participants will visit Montgomery, Alabama on a day trip. There they will tour the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, where Dr. King first served as pastor and the adjacent parsonage of the church. In Montgomery the N.O.W. Encounter campers will also visit the Southern Youth Leadership Development Institute, where Dr. King’s office was located, along with the headquarters of the Montgomery Improvement Association, which conducted the Montgomery Bus Boycott. They will also see the Harris House, where freedom riders were safely hidden during the Movement. At the barber shop where Dr. King had his hair cut, his barber will meet with the youth and discuss Dr. King.
In Birmingham, which is commemorating the 50th anniversary year of the historic 1963 city-wide protest demonstrations, the youth will visit: the Sixteenth St. Baptist Church, which was bombed during the Movement and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. They will also go to nearby Kelly Ingram Park, where protesters were attacked by police dogs, squirted with firehouses and otherwise brutalized during the Birmingham campaign.
For more information, please contact Ms. Barbara Harrison at (404) 526-8961 or via email at bharrison@thekingcenter.org.