Kara, a fellow Peace Corps volunteer, and I taught a CHARACTER COUNTS! summer camp. The camp entailed lessons about building character. We used wonderful information (which my mom uses at her school and told me about... thanks, mom) from the Josephson Institute of Ethics on Character Counts!

CHARACTER COUNTS! is based on 6 pillars of character:

trustworthiness, responsibility, respect, fairness, caring, and citizenship.

The CHARACTER COUNTS! program has produced amazing results. After the second day of class, a blind man came into the camp asking for money. Not knowing what to do I gave him a few pesos. As he was leaving one of the boys followed him out and gave him money. The day before we had spoken about the importance of helping others without recognition. Keep in mind these kids come from poor homes. What a lesson my new little friend had learned. The camp by focusing on the CHARACTER COUNTS! pillars stressed the importance of education through reading and the arts.

The success of the camp will not end with my departure. During the camp we trained teachers from a poor barrio how to implement the pillars. Kara also will continue working with the program. Her Dominican counterparte believes that character education is the answer to her town's poverty.

I really enjoyed working with the children. A famous Rabbi once said that a tree is like a human being. If you make a scratch on a branch on a full grown tree, it only will affect that branch. However, if you make even a miniscule scratch on a seed, you will affect the entire tree. With the CHARACTER COUNTS! program at the summer camp this was accomplished.