They arrive with rough edges, sometimes rude and aggressive. For a week they are lifted from the pressures of their city lives. A rag-tag lot, cautious and suspicious, but curious. Looking to each other for clues and signals as to what might be considered safe, cool. They don’t know what to expect in this new and strange environment.

This place is clean with vivid colors reflected in fields and trees. It smells nice. There are games, art projects, horses, and a swimming hole edged with rocky cliffs and white sandy beach. Caring people to show them about. All for them. What’s the catch?

There is no catch. It is what it seems. A simple kindness. A few days to be a kid as it should be.

Gradually over a day or two they loosen up and relax; the edges wear down, get smoother. Smiles at first tentative are now easy. This place is a good place to be. Harmless, and fun (though maybe a little strange, especially the food.) None of the usual Mickey D’s or KFC’s. Veggie burgers and tofu hotdogs!

Conflict resolution techniques are taught through discussion and games, and by day three they use them on each other without prompting:

They use crayons, paints, pencils, chalk, and create things of beauty with their hands. They act and perform, sharing and laughing together with newly discovered abandon. It is a release. Other new things are shown to them. Different forms of nature, alternative housing, alternative energies, and recycling. Solar ovens are built that can be taken home, in which cookies are sun-baked and eaten with gooey, sticky-fingered delight. Later, perched on ponies, exuberant, they yell to each other, “Look at me! Look at me up here!”

They get proud. They take ownership. They act like they live here. “My horse. My path. My Farm.”

All too soon the week ends, and it’s time to go back. They reflect.

“This is my real home. I’m just going back to get my mother and my sister.”

“I learned many new things. I learned to say blessings and give thanks. I usually don’t do that.”

“I had my picture drawn by Miss Kim, and I look in the mirror every day and it looks just like me. I don’t want to leave.”

“I don’t have so many friends when I am at home.”

“I learned how to color and draw! I think I’m going to be artist when I grow up.”

“I learned not to stand behind horses.”

“I want to come back again next year and someday, I want to be a counselor.”

“It’s safe here.”

One wonders what they will take back that will change their lives and make them better. Does this time, this program, make a difference? The answer is that they will always have what they hold in their hearts. Their experience. That will always belong to them. Wherever their lives might lead them. This is Kids To The Country.