Natalie Peterson Luethi

In 1949, Natalie Peterson Luethi of Barrington founded an international camp in Switzerland. Today her organization has grown into The Luethi-Peterson International Camps, a group of six camps located in various European nations and in the United States. The camp board of directors was for many years based in Barrington, and young people from Rhode Island, ages 9 to 16, have always made up a portion of the campers. The idea came to her during her junior year abroad from Wellesley College, which she spent teaching in Switzerland. In the toxic atmosphere of immediate post World War II Europe, fears and resentments among European students from the opposing Axis and Allied countries were openly expressed. Natalie had the idea that if young people could get to know one another in a small camp organized along family lines, they could learn to live together and appreciate one another as individuals, rather than as representatives of a particular nation. Continuing this tradition, and to meet today’s urgent needs, a camp in Italy has begun operating with refugee children from the Middle East and North Africa.