CCRR

The Young Negotiators Program (YNP) aims to provide youth and their teachers with values of nonviolence, human rights, and democracy and tools for solving conflicts non-violently.

The project seeks to empower the participants of the educational system and the civil society at large in order to creatively shape their relationships and lives in a democratic and peaceful way.

The main beneficiaries are students aged 15 and 16 years from a variety of schools (public, private and UNWRA), as well as their teachers. Indirect beneficiaries are the parents of the target group and with this civil society at large.

YNP offer regular workshops to teachers and students of ten different schools throughout the West Bank. The project will help Palestinian school principals, counselors, teachers, and students and their families to use cooperative negotiation skills as an effective means of dealing with conflict.

Since the beginning of the program the political situation kept changing and deteriorating, nevertheless, no direct influence can be seen on the program. However, the political situation of course affects the participants in this program and therefore indirectly affects the program itself.

Apart from that, we were maybe a little surprised to see how enthusiastic teachers have been about the program, even though the teachers have not received salaries for many months. The frustration about the non-payment does not seem to interfere with the desire of teachers to do a good job for their students and to acquire new knowledge. In general, we have felt during the few months that people are very excited about programs where there is the chance to conduct discussions. This type of exchange is not common in Palestinian society and in difficult periods people seem to need it even more to share their thoughts with a like-minded group, such as colleagues......