Palestinian and Jewish Students Transforming Conflict? (Vision Program - PT. I)

What happens when you put 70 university students in the former Yugoslavia for a summer to learn about resolving ethnic conflict? And what happens when these half of these students are Palestinians and half are Jews?

Welcome to the groundbreaking Vision Program! This ten-month fellowship begins with a month-long trip to the Balkans, meeting activists and scholars alike in Serbia, Kosovo, and Bosnia-Herzegovnia. Students study the Balkan wars of the 1990s in an effort to re-examine and de-exceptionalize the seemingly never-ending Israeli-Palestinian conflict. During the academic year immediately following the summer students engage in two conferences, aimed to empower them to engage with students on their campus, and organize campus and community presentations, helping them articulate their own activist voices.

The Vision Program's goals are to (a) empower participants to heighten their self-awareness, paying particular attention to their political selves; (b) develop critical thinking; and (c) examine how such thinking manifests itself in Jewish-Palestinian relations both in the US and the Middle East.

This program is one of two flagship programs of Abraham's Vision, a conflict transformation organization running educational programs for American-based groups of Jews, Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians. Abraham's Vision is affiliated with the University of San Francisco and Vision Program students receive academic course credit through USF's Center for Global Education.

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• palestinian
• palestine
• muslim
• muslims
• jew
• jewish
• israel
• israeli
• peace
• nonprofit
• education
• conflict
• resolution
• transformation
• balkans
• dialogue