"We must start with the children" ~Dr. Doris Allen, founder of Children's International Summer Villages
	The Beginning...In Doris' Own Words (reprinted from "CISV in the USA, Celebrating 50 Years of Peace Through Understanding" (2001)
	A particular incident in the afternoon of a very hot August 11, 1946 stimulated the formation of a program to educate children for peace. Sitting on a bench by the East River in Schultz Park, New York City, I opened the New York Times Sunday Magazine to a proposal by Alexander Mieklejohn for an Adult Institute at the United Nations in which graduate students from different countries could sit and talk together from their respective fields of history, economics, political science and other disciplines, and come to understand one another in a way to reduce the probability of future wars. As I sat there, I protested to myself this suggestion, because I knew that at the advanced age of the graduate student, at 25 or above, prejudices would be so firmly set that mere discussion would not have the depth of impact on behavior to stimulate the necessary decisions and actions for peace.
	I then walked the block back to the Child Education Foundation where I was currently employed on a three week consulting job. I said to myself that if I rejected the proposal I must think of another. Upon arrival I sat down at the typewriter in the lobby and spelled out the beginnings of a program for children before the age of adolescence. During the next weeks I continued developing the program during luncheons and dinners as I hunted out eating places from the closed shops of mid-August. When away from work I was alone and could feel the persistent pressure. The need for action haunted me.
	With the opening of the American Psychological Association Meeting in Philadelphia three weeks later, I hunter out Gordon Allport and said, "I have an idea. What shall I do with it?" His immediate reply was, "You have put your finger on the missing link in our plans for the future, the children. Present this at my upcoming symposium. You can't be on the platform because everything is already planned. But speak from the floor whenever you find an opening."
	The first speaker gave that opening. He ended with "I don't know that there is anything we can do in working with these adolescents of different nationalities. Such hatred is there!" Dr. Allport asked for comments. "Yes," I practically shouted to be heard in the large auditorium, "I think there is something we can do. We can bring children together before adolescence so that they can learn to be friends before prejudices are so deep. They can live together in a camp-like setting and learn to be friends." I sat down and the next speaker, who was from the State Department, picked up my words so that, after all, the proposal for CISV came first from the platform at the 54th annual meeting of the American Psychological Association.
	Extracted from Learnings from CISV Research, Part 1, by Doris T Allen