AMHERST – A group of students at Souhegan High School have been watching the violence unfold in Israel and Palestine and during a meeting of “Creating Friendships for Peace,” they expressed how deeply affected they’ve been.

CFP is an international organization that began as the successful all-volunteer “Children’s Friendship Project for Northern Ireland Inc.”

Peggy Barrett, a housewife in Pennsylvania, supported by her husband Jack, founded CFPNI in 1987. Her vision was that the divisions in Northern Ireland could be overcome by building understanding, trust and friendships between the teenaged leaders of the future of the Protestent and Catholic communities.

CFPNI ended after the summer of ’07 after the situation in Northern Ireland improved. Over its 21 years, CFPNI brought teens from more than 2,000 families in Northern Ireland and hosted them in some two-dozen areas of the U.S. and an enormous friendship network was established.

The CFP has morphed into different projects, including the Cyprus Friendship Program, and eventually changing its moniker to the current name.

On Tuesday, five students, Madeleine Glover, Corinne McNamara, Neve Quinn, Amelia Wysor and Tylee Jancar gathered at Souhegan High’s library, along with CFP N.H. coordinator Bo Dean, librarians Marjorie Hobbs and Sarah Kunyosying, Dean of Students Kelly Driscoll and CFP Cyprus Program coordinator Betsy Small, to discuss world affairs and how being a member of CFP has taught each student how to adapt to conflict within their daily high school lives.

“We’re here to talk about how you students participate and what we’re trying to do in our community,” Dean said. The second goal of the meeting was to discuss the possibility of creating a club for teens who are passionate about making the world a gentler and more understanding place.

Dean spoke to the participating students about their invaluable input in CFP and also wanted to allow them a chance to discuss their recent involvement in a nine-week seminar.

“In Cyprus, where this program started, we talked about bringing Greek-speaking Cypriots from the southside of the island together with Turkish-speaking Cypriots from the northside,” Dean said. “Because as people may or may not know, Cyprus is a divided country still to this day. It grew out of that to bring people together.”

The goal is to bring teens from those divided countries to America where they would live with a host family, and learn about some of the same things that people do together. Because of COVID, hosting operations were suspended last year and this year as well.

A nine-week seminar was conducted Saturday mornings in lieu of hosting and each Souhegan High School student offered their feelings and what they’ve learned during that time.

“We had different people come in and talk about conflict resolution, psychological aspects of good communication and global perspectives in the Middle East,” Dean said. “These five students participated along with 15 others from different parts of the country.”

Small said that she reached out to Maggie Hassan’s office, who sent a letter extending her congratulations on the teens’ completion of the seminar program.

“The dedication you displayed by engaging in this program is a valuable and essential quality that will ultimately help you succeed,” Hassan wrote.

For these students, the ability to Zoom call other students across the country was also noted by Small.

The target audience for CFP is 15 – 18 years of age.

“We didn’t want to exclude people this year,” Dean said. “Out of the 20 people who ended up being in the seminars, I think we had five seniors and the rest were underclassmen.”

Five states were represented: Oregon, California, Maryland, Virginia and New Hampshire.

CorinneMcNamara said that one of the things she liked about the program was that she was able to make friends from across the country.

“I have friends internationally but not across the country,” she said. “I want to grow and expand my roots. I am close to two of the people from Oregon and California. We still text each other.”

Madeleine Glover said she agreed with McNamara, saying “The best things to come out of it was the connection with others. It was more important now than in any other year because of how hard it’s been to make new friends due to COVID.”

Glover said she liked being in a group of “like-minded people,” but the group also learned their differences, “in a good way, like in any other friendship.”

Tylee Jancar called the aspect of making friends, “amazing,” but was able to draw on her knowledge from the experience to apply it to her life at home.

“I find myself now, if I get into a situation with my sister, I can use a lot of the skills that people introduced to us,” she said. “Like stress management because I am a very stressed out person sometimes.”

Amelia Wysor said that with world events, she’s learned about the Gaza-Israeli conflict.

“I’m thinking about it on a more personal level,” she said. “I’m definitely more invested in what the United States is proposing to do or how the U.S. is getting involved. From a current events standpoint, it was helpful to be able to understand why things are happening.”

The group hopes to have a club at some point.

“Souhegan is such a unique community,” Hobbs said. “I knew that students would be interested in participating in something that was bigger than themselves.”

Driscoll said that Souhegan is deeply rooted in relationships and community.

“It’s at the heart of who we are,” she said. “It’s a natural extension of our community of Souhegan and of Amherst and Mont Vernon. I see this as the work of healing our world. The relationships and the connections are the only way to heal.”