Sadaka Reut - Arab Jewish Youth Partnership

Our 3 projects are: *Our flagship project for over twenty years, ‘Building a Culture of Peace’ brings together Palestinian and Jewish teenagers in a 2-year educational process which seeks to deal with the consequences of the Arab-Israeli conflict on the Israeli society. With the majority of Palestinian and Jewish youth citizens of Israel, being physically segregated from one another (in separate communities and schools) and fears, racism and prejudice the result, we look to build alternative models for interaction between the two groups. The ‘Building a Culture of Peace’ program seeks to create a space in which both Palestinian and Jewish youth may feel equal, respected and recognized as individuals and as national collectives. This is achieved through an educational approach based on a combination of long-term uni-national and bi-national work, delivered through weekly meetings, weekend seminars and our intensive summer program. This blend ensures that our youth go through in-depth processes enabling them to deal with the respective needs of each national community, something necessary given that the two groups are not symmetric. Moreover, it creates the grounds for a bi-national encounter capable of challenging the segregation and alienation at the base of Israel’s reality. *‘The Markaz’ project was established in 2006 as a natural development of the organization’s involvement in the Arab- Jewish mixed city of Jaffa. The alternative the ‘Markaz’ seeks to construct is one based on the creation of a bi-national framework encouraging political education and youth activism. This framework stresses the need to develop a community of young activists with a bi-national approach, out of the understanding that such frameworks are increasingly rare across Israel’s socio-political spectrum. Moreover, we believe such structures are absolutely necessary in order to bring about a joint struggle for the building of a different future. The ‘Markaz’ creates a framework for encounter and joint action of Arab and Jewish youth from the mixed cities of Jaffa, Ramle and Lud, as well as from Bat Yam and south Tel Aviv, as part of the understanding that the lives of these communities are interrelated. Youth living in these communities come from the social periphery and usually from middle and low socio-economic backgrounds. The Arab youth, in this context, suffer from the double oppression of their economic and their national background. The Jewish youth also come from excluded groups, mostly new immigrants (Russia and Ethiopia) and Sephardi Jews. Encounters between these youth rarely take place, whilst there lacks bi-national frameworks in the area that can prove successful in providing empowering outlets for these youth. * 'Community in Action' - Formerly entitled ‘Leaders for Change’, the Community in Action program seeks to create and develop a bi-national community of young activist leaders, skilled and devoted to creating social and political change in Israel-Palestine, promoting equality, social and historical justice and the respect for human and civil rights of all people. The project seeks to develop, at the grass-roots level, bi-national action groups ready and qualified for effective involvement in the political sphere, capable of challenging the injustices and the non-respect of human and civil rights that make up Israel-Palestine’s reality, while strengthening democratic values. The ‘Community in Action’ program is designed to address the acute shortage of committed and professionally trained young people acting as constructive agents for change within society in Israel. What makes these particular groups unique is that the concept of Jewish-Arab partnership lies at the very base of their outlook, something, we believe, is a necessary component for effective social change in Israel. This partnership represents our vision, and simultaneously, our approach: a belief in joint action which encompasses both sides, whilst challenging society and the structures of segregation it upholds. It is a socio-political model which identifies common interests and a common goal whilst recognizing the existence of two distinct national groups. Capitalizing on the success of the ‘Leaders for Change’ program, in which we trained groups of 6-8 high school graduates over a year-long cycle, we now work with a larger net of young adults in an altogether more far-reaching project. This broader position means we work with graduates from our various programs right up to university students, reaching numbers of up to 30-35 youth each year.