By DEXTER DUGGAN
TEMPE, Ariz. — The sixth-floor exposed rooftop of an apartment complex here, near Arizona State University, seemed like an appealing place for a get-together by Project Arizona and its supporters on March 3, when evenings still are cool in the desert. But strong breezes introduced an unexpected element to a buffet dinner of ethnic foods.
Some chafing-dish lids flew onto the floor and it became a hopeless task to keep people’s hair out of their eyes.
However, such a surprise was hardly a heavy challenge to Project Arizona’s eight young international participants, who kept eating while celebrating what they were learning about freedom, liberty, and entrepreneurship that they hope to apply back in their native lands. The evening’s meal was dishes they’d each prepared with recipes from those lands.
While here, they attend classes at Arizona State, serve in liberty-oriented internships, visit sites like the free-market Goldwater Institute and Arizona Supreme Court, as well as enjoying scenic trips.
They want people in nations with strong governments to learn the benefits when there instead are strong, capable individuals.
Project Arizona began four years ago with six young European participants, from Poland, Ukraine, and Georgia, coming to the Grand Canyon State to study firsthand what made the United States a success story. The project’s current class of eight stretches from China to India to Europe and South America.
As the sun sank behind mountains on the western edge of the Phoenix metropolitan area, Glenn Cripe, the founder and executive director of the Language of Liberty Institute, chatted with The Wanderer about the contribution he made to help Project Arizona begin.
Cripe said he organizes five-to-six-day retreats, known as Liberty Camps, in developing countries that feature English-language practice, information on free trade and entrepreneurship, and workshops on applying these ideas.
Polish native Jacek Spendel at age 21 came to Cripe, wanting to start a Liberty Camp in Poland, Cripe said, then envisioned “sort of like a Liberty Camp, but for a three-month period” in Arizona, which became the Project Arizona of which Spendel is founder and director.
Spendel’s travels had taken him to Arizona, which he came to love as a state representing freedom and liberty, as well as scenic beauty and good weather. He divides his time between Poland and Arizona now.
Cripe told The Wanderer he used to live in Arizona but moved to the region of Umbria in Italy three years ago, from where he helps organize and conduct seminars for the Liberty Camps. He said he’d be leaving for India in a week, will have a five-day camp in Colombia in June, and has been to 31 countries organizing the camps.
His home is in San Feliciano, Italy, on the shore of Lake Trasimeno, a fishing village that draws tourists from northern Europe, Cripe said.
One of this year’s Project Arizona participants, Estefania Sandoval, works at a think tank in Quito, Ecuador, named Libre Razon, which translates as Free Reason. She’s 23 years old but pointed out that she’ll turn 24 in May.
(Ah, to return to the days when people are young enough that they want you to know they’re getting older.)
Asked what she likes in the U.S., Sandoval replied, “I like Arizona and all the freedoms that come with all the states, but Arizona especially.”
What doesn’t she like? “Bernie Sanders and the Democrats, because they don’t understand socialism.”
The multilingual Nene Kolbaia, from Tbilisi, Georgia, is only 20 years of age but already knows five languages, ranging from Russian to Spanish, and is studying a sixth, Japanese.
Kolbaia said this is her first time in the U.S. and she sees that people have to work on their own self-improvement before expecting it in others.
Georgia had been part of the USSR, but after Soviet control split apart, Russia is the region’s dominating power.
People can be uncomfortable with the concept of freedom if they’re used to having their needs simply provided to them, Kolbaia said. “They’ve been in this condition for so long, it’s their comfort zone. If someone provides them food, that’s their comfort zone.”
As for what she’s learning in the United States, “I cannot say I can take back freedom. You have to implement it in people’s minds . . . .I will take courage and I will take this attitude. . . . It’s better to fight for your own freedom.”
Pablo Garcia Quint, 21, from La Paz, Bolivia, told The Wanderer, “I realize that Arizona is a pretty free state,” where people can defend their families with firearms.
“I really enjoy the U.S.,” he said, adding that in coming from a developing country, “…I see a lot of the advantages that freedom has given you.”
As for there being a right to carry guns, “If you say that in Bolivia, it’s very controversial.”
Also up on the apartments’ rooftop was Ron Ludders, chairman of the Arizona Project, a Phoenix Tea Party whose name is the reverse of Project Arizona. The young people recently had spoken at the weekly meeting of Ludders’ group.
Ludders told The Wanderer that the concept of Project Arizona is a powerful example of a way to help other nations improve, instead of saying that only by moving to the U.S. can people find their fulfillment.
Taking the lessons of free markets and liberty back home, Ludders said, will “plant the seeds of western growth and development, far better than having these people come and relocate to the United States . . . when they have this great opportunity to enhance their native lands.”
Mary Ruwart, Ph.D., chair of Liberty International, spoke to the evening’s gathering on “How Liberty Can Save the Environment.” She authored the book Healing Our World: The Compassion of Libertarianism. How to Enrich the Poor, Protect the Environment, Deter Crime & Defuse Terrorism.
The other participants in Project Arizona 2020 are Benjamin Frormann, Austria; Kateryna Shapovalenko, Ukraine; Myra Huang, China; Nicolas Zelada, Argentina; and Himanshu Dhingra, India.
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