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Every year, Leaders in Training travel to the USA for the Friendship Tour. This year, the Friendship Tour is adding Canada! We will be visiting Seattle, WA from April 5th to 10th, and Vancouver, BC from April 11th to 16th! We hope to see you and your friends along the way!

During their two-week stretch, 14 LITs (plus three graduates of the program joining as staff) will visit with hundreds of youth and adults at schools, community centers, private homes, universities, and even host a formal press conference in Vancouver! These and other discussions will focus on who the LITs are, what they have found in Ultimate Peace, and why they are visiting North America.

Follow along on our Facebook Page for introductions to the team, our own UP tournament hosted in Seattle, parties, presentations, and more! The LITS will be playing in Ultimate Peace’s very own Mixed Gender and a Split Gender Tournaments, as well as holding an AMAZING  fundraiser & celebration in Seattle.

Vancouver is just as slammed with panels, presentations, festivities, and maybe some biking along the seawall. We’re hosting 2 events – a “Fancy but Frisbee” event for the community, and a private gala!

See some of the highlights on our schedule below! How can you help? PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD! Send these FB events & flyers to family and friends – invite people directly on Facebook. Getting people to our events is a HUGE help!

• UP Fundraiser – Flyer (PDF)
• UP Tour One-Pager 2017 Seattle – Flyer (PDF)
• UP Tour One-Pager 2017 Vancouver – Flyer (PDF)

Ultimate Peace is a volunteer led organization funded primarily by donations.  In addition to the CITs sharing their stories and raising awareness about Ultimate Peace, the Friendship Tour is an opportunity for donors and potential donors to meet face to face with these young leaders.

The Youth Leadership page has more information on the CIT program and the tour.  If you have questions, or suggestions and support, please get in contact.

Last night, Camp Ultimate Peace celebrated the graduation of 13 leaders in training from UP’s signature leadership development program. This class represents the largest class in the five-year history of the program, and the ceremony featured both personal and fun examples of the teenagers’ growth through the three years.

The event had three unique components: a video of their time together – constructed by the graduates themselves; tri-lingual recognition of each graduate with a presentation of the graduation certificate and Five Ultimate gear; finally a song, led by a previous leadership program graduate and a coach visiting Camp from the US.

Graduating at Camp 2016 represents the third and final development stage for these 13 young people: Campers up through Camp 2013. They then worked hard as LITs for three years: growing closer, learning our sport and values, then completing projects.

From now on these 13 young people are full-fledged coaches and administrators, including Camp this week, our deepest and strongest in UP history. Congratulations to the newest staff of Ultimate Peace!!!

This past weekend featured back-to-back End of Season events in Ultimate Peace, highlighting the leaders-in-training (LITs) and UP’s year-round programming with hundreds of participants!

On Friday, more than 30 LITs with their staff began their last 24-hour meeting of the year. The first-year participants have grown closer over the year and planned a great half-day of activities for the upcoming Camp. The second-year LITs talked about their April Friendship Tour of the USA and discussed the approaching last year in the program. And the third-year LITs presented to program staff about their projects, many of which relate to expanding the reach and depth of Ultimate Peace.

One third-year LIT, Nevo, spent his spring break 2016 – two weeks – coaching every single UP practice during that time period. Since that time, he has been planning to host American LITs visiting the Middle East before and after Camp in July. This hosting involves communicating with families and teens in the US and Middle East, coordinating communication, information, logistics, and more. As a bilingual LIT from Kiryat Ono, a Jewish community, Nevo partnered with another third-year LIT, Feras, who is from an Arab community, Arrabe, to have three languages in the surveys.

There are two additional aspects of the LIT weekend that were extremely encouraging were. Firstly, that all three years’ LIT training programs Friday were led in part or whole by graduates of the LIT program itself!!! These junior staff are growing by leaps and bounds through increased responsibility, difficulty, and success! Secondly, that two third-year LITs led the tournament on Saturday. This being their second such tournament taking a leading role, they capably helped organize the format and fields as well as assignments of coaches, LITs, and players to teams.

We were very happy that Saturday’s “Friendship Hat” Tournament was a partnership with Fresh Ultimate.

Aren’t you as proud of them as we are?!!?

UP has been running practices in communities in the Middle East since 2009, at each practice we have at least one ‘Mentor’ coach – A UP staff member or volunteer who knows the game of ultimate and plans and runs the practice.  As the LIT program has developed, LITs have begun helping and taking on more responsibilities with practices.  Sometimes, when schedules and holidays collide, and we do not have a Mentor coach, practice has to be canceled.  It’s rare, but it happens.

This Friday, however was a UP first: A community practice planned and run entirely by community coaches with no outside help!  Arabe residents Yara Nassar, ’14 CIT (now LIT) Graduate head coached the practice along with 3rd year LITs Eman and Feras.  18 Arabe players joined practice, where they worked on give-and-goes and setting up a vertical stack quickly before playing an ultimate game.

This is a big new step in the development of the Year Round Program as a whole, and especially the LIT program.  As our LITs and LIT graduates become more skilled and self confident, we expect to be able to create more practices fully run by local coaches adding to the sustainability of the program.