冲突通常被视为遥远的事物，与战区、地缘政治对抗和海外危机联系在一起。但专注于冲突解决和青年领导力的非营利组织“和平种子”的执行主任伊娃·阿默，在受冲突影响的社区工作了二十多年。而这些同样的力量现在正发生在离家更近的地方。
阿默在接受采访时表示，美国境内的分裂程度已经加剧，以至于在活跃冲突地区使用的工具现在也需要应用在美方国内。阿默引用了2021年的一项民调，其中超过一半的美国人表示“其他人”是该国最大的问题，排名领先于经济、外国威胁甚至自然灾害。对于一个旨在通过对话和共同经验将来自长期冲突对立方的年轻人聚集在一起的组织来说，这种情绪并不令人意外。它不仅反映了分歧，还反映了人们在相互看待和接触方式上的深度崩溃。
“和平种子”成立于1993年，旨在直接解决这一问题，为来自冲突地区的年轻人——包括以色列和巴勒斯坦、印度和巴基斯坦等——创造面对面交流的空间。几十年来，该模型基本保持不变：沉浸式的线下体验，结合共同的日常生活活动以及针对分歧问题的结构化对话。阿默表示，这些年来，该组织了解到这种模式本身不需要改变，即使它运作的背景已经变得更加迫切。
Conflict is often treated as something distant—associated with war zones, geopolitical rivalries and crises unfolding overseas. But Eva Armour, executive director of Seeds of Peace, a nonprofit focused on conflict resolution and youth leadership, has spent more than two decades working in communities shaped by conflict. And those same forces are now playing out much closer to home.“We’ve worked with young people from the U.S. since our founding,” Armour told Newsweek in a recent interview with Senior Editor Jenni Fink. In the U.S., she added, the level of division has intensified to the point where the same tools used in areas of active conflict are now needed domestically.Speaking with Newsweek, Armour cited a 2021 poll in which more than half of Americans said “other people” were the country’s biggest problem—ranking ahead of the economy, foreign threats and even natural disasters. For an organization built on bringing together young people from opposing sides of long-standing conflicts through dialogue and shared experience, that sort of sentiment is, unfortunately, not surprising. It reflects not just disagreement, but a deeper breakdown in how people see and engage with one another.Seeds of Peace was founded in 1993 to address that problem directly, creating spaces where young people from regions in conflict—Israel and Palestine, India and Pakistan, among others—could meet face-to-face. In the decades since, the model has remained largely intact: immersive, in-person experiences that combine shared daily activities—living together, playing sports and eating meals—with structured dialogue about the issues dividing them.Over the years, Armour said, the organization has learned that the formula itself doesn’t need to change—even as the context in which it operates has become more urgent.“The work is strong. The work works. The problem is we don’t have enough of it,” she said....In places long defined by conflict, participants often arrive with deeply entrenched views shaped by history, education and personal loss. But Armour said similar patterns are now emerging in the U.S., where polarization has made it harder for people to engage across differences without escalating into hostility or disengagement.At its core, Seeds of Peace’s approach is a simple but demanding idea: curiosity.Participants are encouraged not to abandon their beliefs, but to test them—actively seeking out perspectives that challenge their assumptions.“I used to say to my campers at camp, take the thing that you hold most sacred… and then try to find anything that you can to counter that,” Armour said.The goal is not agreement. It is understanding.That distinction matters most in environments defined by competing narratives. Armour recalled one participant from Pakistan who, after meeting peers from India, realized for the first time that they had been taught entirely different versions of the same history. The experience led him and others to create a project placing those