Interfaith Learning and Ethics Education in a Multi-Religious Group in Israel -- Project Description
We wish to work with a mixed group of Jewish, Muslim and Christian young people (aged 16 - 17) towards the following ends:
1. Empowerment of the youth by raising their awareness and acquaintance with their group identity; helping them to connect to their identity in its various components: religious, national and cultural.
2. Raising their awareness to differences and the importance of accepting the other.
3. Developing awareness to the necessity of assuming social responsibility and leadership.
4. The group will go through a process that prepares its members to become agents of change in their societies, to promote values such as equality, reconciliation and peace.
Methodology and Program Structure
Two facilitators (a Jew and an Arab) will work with a multi-religious youth group of twenty participants. The encounter will be based on content and process. Educational content will be presented partly through experiential activities in order to capture the interest of the young participants. This content will contribute towards a rich group process through which the participants will learn about themselves and their relationship with the other people.
The group will be small enough (20 persons) to permit all activities and dialogue sessions to take place in the whole group. However, sometimes the group will be divided by religion, nationality or gender into smaller task groups, depending on the focus of the workshop.
Whereas use of the majority language is usually taken for granted in Arab - Jewish interactions, both Arabic and Hebrew will be established as legitimate languages of the encounter, and the participants will have the ability to choose to express themselves in their own language, with translation being provided by the facilitators.
Each seminar will have several components:
1. Theoretical and textual learning.
2. Experiential learning such as art, excursions, encounters and interviews with other people outside the group.
3. Interpersonal and intergroup facilitated dialogue.
Target Population
We will work with a mixed Arab - Jewish multi-religious group (Jews, Muslims, Christians).who are motivated to participate and who are recommended by their peers and educators in leaders in their society. We will recruit these young people from the communities where our organizations work: the mixed towns of Ramle and Lod, and Neve Shalom ~ Wahat al-Salam.
Framework of the Activities
The first activity will take place in November 2006. This will be a long weekend seminar (Thursday to Saturday) to provide the participants with sufficient time to get to know each other.
The initial seminar will be followed by shorter weekend seminars (Friday afternoon to Saturday evening) at a frequency of one per month (four short weekend seminars in all). We will conclude the program with festive long weekend program - probably around May 2007.
Each weekend seminar will take place in a different location in Israel. During the long weekend seminar of November 2006, the facilitators and participants will elect two young leaders (a Jew and a Palestinian) whose function will be to help with the ongoing planning of the program. The two leaders will also represent Israel in the youth council of the GNRC.
