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Though they were from the same school, the students might know each other only from a class or two they shared, or from playing on the same sports team. They almost certainly never sat together during lunch, when students at every public school in the country are most likely to sort themselves by skin color, ethnicity or social clique.

The cost of their Outward Bound course, more than $1,000 per student, would be covered by a scholarship except for about $75 each student would pay to show a commitment to the program. After going through the program in the summer, students would go back to their schools and teach the principles they had learned.

Much of what they learn, Genova says, is about trust. Through heat and cold and rain and fatigue, which discriminate against no one, they learn how strong and capable they and others are. In rock climbing, for instance, the person up in the air has to rely on another one on the ground, holding the rope that will keep the climber from falling.

It started with kids from Asheville and surrounding Buncombe County.

Gordon Grant was an assistant principal at Asheville Middle School when it joined the Unity Project. Grant, too, had been an instructor for North Carolina Outward Bound and had known Genova for a decade. He had seen the way kids respond to the easygoing old guy with the soft voice and the build of a 4-mile-a-day runner. They call him Gray Wolf.

"It's really quite heartwarming," Grant said. "Dave is very fit, sort of lean, and he looks like your idealized version of a wilderness guy: sort of weather-beaten and tough. But he has a tremendous warmth about him that the kids immediately like."

The Unity Project has expanded to include nearly 1,000 students from schools in Asheville, Charlotte, Greensboro, Raleigh, Chapel Hill and Greenville, S.C. Israel has launched a Unity Project to bring together Israeli and Palestinian youths, who aren't even allowed to attend the same schools.

This year, in North Carolina, it's in nine schools in Asheville, Charlotte and Chapel Hill. Next year, a new high school in Carrboro will send a dozen students.

Tired, exhilarated

Jane Hall is working with her sixth Unity crew at East Chapel Hill High school. She doesn't go into the wilderness with the students but watches them leave and is there when they come back, tired, exhilarated and changed.

"When they come off that bus, that's my favorite part," Hall says. "A lot of them have never been camping before, and they come off that bus and they're best buddies. They're joined at the hip. They can't stop talking about the experience. It's really exciting to see that."

Laura Guerrero, a senior at Chapel Hill High School, almost didn't get on the bus for her nine-day Unity Project tour in August 2005. But the night before she was to leave, she bought a pair of hiking boots and decided to give the program a try.

Guerrero, now 18, came with her family to the United States from Colombia and had been teased about her accent. Still, she says, she went into the Unity Project believing, "I could do anything I set my mind to."

She finished the course but only with the encouragement of Genova and others on the crew. Once, she sat down and said she was done, she couldn't hike anymore. The crew rallied around her and made her leader of the hike.

"After that," she said, "I realized it's not all about me and my goals. I could help other people achieve their goals, like Dave did for us. If he can do it, so can I."

In November, Genova won a Nancy Susan Reynolds Award from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation for his work on the Unity Project. The award, which honors North Carolina's unsung heroes, came with $25,000 that Genova plans to use as seed money for a $5 million trust that could fund the program forever.

Genova describes himself as a simple person and says the Unity Project is simple, too.

"I describe it as finding the kindergartner in you," Genova says. "When you were in kindergarten, when somebody treated you like a friend, they were your friend. We have to remember how to see each other for who we are. If we could just learn to close our eyes and hear what people have to say, without thinking about what they look like, we'd all be better off."

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