|
Young Leaders Program
Many Palestinian school-kids have nothing much to do during summer due
to the long summer vacations which last three months. In 2002, CCRR held
summer courses that sought to enable the participants to solve
conflicts typically encountered at school. The idea was to train a
small number of students in basic conflict resolution and thus to
empower them to improve relations between students when back at school.
The participants came from four schools in the Bethlehem district (city,
village, and camp). Each school sent five students to participate in the
program. Helping students from different backgrounds to form
relationships was a promising start because it encouraged the
participants to reevaluate their own beliefs and experiences.
The course consisted of 50 training session lasting an hour each and
focused on the concept of leadership, group participation, communication
and conflict resolution. The discussions went even further with, the
students talking about human rights and democracy and critically
discussing the value of non-violence.
Although the program was successful at the time; we have not had a
chance to evaluate its long-term effects yet. We feel that the summer
class alone is not enough. The main lesson learnt is that if we bring
youth from different backgrounds together, we can create a stimulating
atmosphere that is conductive to new discussions. In future, we seek to
integrate summer camps into our other youth programs because we believe
that our entire program will be more sustainable and more effective if
the young leaders support a community that is already a similar with the
concept of conflict resolution.
|
