Although young people are indisputably the most dynamic part of societal structures, the youth are not sufficiently esteemed and cherished by society. Especially migrant children are often doubly estranged from society, besieged by a sense of loneliness and exclusion. They are part of two different social structures but often unable to fully adapt to either of them. This dilemma can cause identity crises or depressions and even amount to heavy psychological problems and traumatisation if the young people originally come from a society confronted with heavy suppression of its cultural identity and language and if they experienced humiliation, discrimination, fears, isolation or violence related to the non-acknowledgement of their culture. We organized a summer camp with the intention to help young Kurdish girls cope with their feelings of estrangement, solitude and exclusion.

One of our aims was to help the young girls' integration to the society they live in, create opportunities for them to meet peers and overcome their loneliness. We favored an approach that would allow the girls to mutually contribute to each others' development. The summer camp was held from 12 to 22 August 2002 in the town of Ede in the Netherlands with the participation of 17 girls from different towns all over the Netherlands. One of the items on the camp's agenda were Kurdish lessons with a view on presenting the girls facilities to learn their mother tongue in accordance with Article 30 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The main focus of the camp, though, was on seminars and discussions concerning questions related to the problems the participants voiced - mainly concerning the social environment in which they live. The participants were encouraged to propose and develop strategies for tackling their problems. Additionally, sessions were held under the supervision of an expert pedagogues with a view on understanding how the problems the participants face constitute impediments to their personal development and negatively affect their psychological constitution. On the other hand, different sportive and cultural activities were organized and handicraft courses offered to allow the girls to be creative and develop their manual skills. The participants were taught how to make necklaces, wristbands and earrings or paper flowers.

Excursions into nature were made to contribute to a notion of environment.  At the end of the discussions, the participants gained own views on what it means to be a stranger in a given society and how to deal with identity and personality problems caused by the constant vacillation between two different cultures. The participants stated that it was necessary to have similar activities regularly and make an effort to incorporate more young girls. But another result of the discussions was that the participants emphasized that it was very important to overcome the lack of awareness concerning the issues discussed in their own families and provide sufficient information to parents and others. Many of the girls voiced the demand for frequent gatherings and asked us to design specific educational programmes for their mothers and fathers.

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