Mabat - Awareness in a Multicultural Society

Academic Programs:

Mabat runs yearlong programs at Haifa University, Beit Berl College, and Azrieli College of Engineering Jerusalem, facilitating mixed Arab-Jewish leadership and dialogue groups. Through a sequence of meaningful meetings between participants from diverse social backgrounds, students gain valuable conflict resolution and reconciliation skills and learn to reflect upon personal and mutual experiences. Our activity plan is derived from a range of theoretical models in the field of multicultural education, group facilitation, and experiential learning that involves hands-on workshops including outdoor education, photography, music, and more. Students receive academic credit for their participation in Mabat courses and also work in various volunteer schemes to contribute to their communities.
To date, we have run over 88 groups across Israel, changing the perceptions of more than 1,000 participants. Our in-house and external evaluations have revealed significant personal change in participants and positive influence on fostering multicultural dialogue on both campuses and in the community at large.
At the moment, we are working to expand our work to additional campuses where Mabat programs can be integrated as academic courses, accredited community outreach activities, and training programs for community leadership.
✓ Lasting an entire academic year of weekly meetings, the transformative process takes students from personal reflection to inter-group encounter, coming to fruition with community service.
✓ Rooted in experiential learning, our curriculum includes a range of methodologies such as outdoor education, photography, theatre, and music.
✓ Each class is a microcosm of the diversity of Israel; we ensure an equal number of Arab and Jewish participants and also give voice to the multiplicity of complex identities within each group, i.e. gender, religion, sexual orientation etc.
✓ Facilitated sessions: Our facilitators—one Arab and one Jewish in each class—are trained to handle cultural and linguistic sensitivities.
✓ We turn cultural difference into a resource that leads to creation and joint-action.
Community Outreach Towards Social Change
Mabat is an entrepreneurial project. Our students are driven to take what they have learned out of the classroom and implement on campus and in their communities.
✓ Multicultural Tours: Our students and alumni are trained to run joint tours for Jewish and Arab pupils in Haifa’s multicultural and multireligious neighborhood Ein HaYam.
✓ Mabat students organize multicultural home-concerts in Haifa. Students learn to create space for intercultural encounters, to manage small budgets and to formulate artistic programs.
✓ “Multicultural Festivals” adopted by the university: campus-wide roundtables and discussion groups.
✓ Our model is easily replicable: We run workshops, trainings, and seminars for educators and students where they learn to facilitate groups using the Mabat model. We also run tailored diversity seminars for other groups.