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Afghan Seed Ventures project provides Internet training to Kabul students

KABUL | The Internet Training Course, a Seed Ventures project developed and led by Shapoor, a 2009 Afghan Seed, launched at the Ghulam Haidar Khan High School in Kabul on Saturday, March 17. Over 250 teachers, participants in an Afghanistan Ministry of Education training seminar at the high school, were present to witness the launch.

Access to the Internet is rare in Afghanistan and its general absence from learning environments leaves a void in students’ ability to access information about other countries and cultures. Many schools in Kabul lack both computers and pertinent curricula.

“The students in our schools are limited with what they read in textbooks,” said Shapoor. He aims to combat the knowledge deficit by providing over 300 Kabul public school students with workshops over the course of the next six months during which they will learn how to use the Internet as an educational resource—as a way “to learn, search and communicate.”

In addition to increasing technological awareness and facility among Kabul youth, the Internet Training Course will also provide substantial leadership opportunities; while the first workshop will be conducted by a professional, subsequent workshops will turn one session’s students into the next session’s teachers.

Shapoor purchased three computers and accompanying equipment for the Internet Training Project with funding that he was awarded after a Seed Ventures competition in which he had to demonstrate the potential impact and fiscal responsibility of his plan in a written application as well as in front of a panel. Sayed Taheri and Nasradin Afzali, two of the panel members who approved the funding for Shapoor’s project, attended the launch.

Seed Ventures, a program partnership between Seeds of Peace and Ashoka’s Youth Venture, provides social entrepreneurial training to Afghan, Indian, and Pakistani Seeds, giving them the tools and resources needed to develop innovative, effective approaches to societal issues.

Ghulam Haidar Khan High School Principal Asadullah Kohistani introduced Seed of Peace to the training seminar participants in the audience, commending the work the organization has done in support of education in Afghanistan, and thanked Shapoor for implementing such an important project at the school.

Afghan officials are currently considering ways in which new technology can be incorporated into the national curriculum, and The Internet Training Project, Khohistani said, was laying important groundwork.

“I think this is a great start for introducing the new technology into Afghan schools,” said Wali Arian, Director of Afghan Programs for Seeds of Peace. “The project was introduced to more than 250 teachers … and I am sure they will take this subject seriously for their own schools as well.”

Shapoor agreed. “I hope one day all schools in Afghanistan will have this subject as part of their educational curriculum.”

Learn more about South Asia Seed Ventures »

Arabs, Israelis Hold Peace Reunion
Fox News

Israelis and Arabs attending a camp reunion in the woods of Maine are keeping an eye on the Gaza Strip, where a move is being made toward peace in the Middle East.

Badawi Qawasmi, a 26-year-old Palestinian, said Monday he hopes Israel’s withdrawal of 8,500 Jewish settlers from Gaza will lead to better lives in the impoverished, overcrowded area of 1.3 million Palestinians.

“I hope it’s just the first step,” said Qawasmi, who is among the former Seeds of Peace  campers, now in their 20s, who gathered for the first formal reunion in the camp’s 13-year history.

Seeds of Peace was established to bring together Israeli and Arab teenagers in search of common ground, a daunting task well before the historic evacuation of Gaza. The withdrawal marks the first time Israel will give up land captured during the 1967 Mideast War that is claimed by the Palestinians for their future state.

“I think it’s the worst thing that can happen to the region and the Palestinians because they’re not a player in what’s happening to them,” said Liav Hertsman, 25, a TV producer in Tel Aviv.

Still, the tranquility of the 67-acre camp was in stark contrast to the events in Gaza. Monday was the first day of a 48-hour grace period during which settlers can leave voluntarily without losing any of their government compensation.

On Wednesday, troops will begin dragging out any settlers still there.

Although the withdrawal was on the minds of the former campers, they also spoke about life back home, school and careers. The reunion was billed as a “Leadership Summit” where alumni can reconnect and recommit to promoting Israeli-Arab peace.

Standing near the shore of Pleasant Lake, two Israeli and two Egyptian men laughed as they talked about old times and caught up on each others’ lives. A sign stuck in the ground has arrows saying “Portland 45 miles,” “Jerusalem 6,000 kilometers.”

About half of the campers are Israelis, with an equal number of Palestinians, Egyptians and Jordanians, and a handful of Americans.

Former campers were attending workshop sessions on politics, the media, business and conflict resolution, in addition to traditional summer camp activities such as basketball, canoeing, water skiing or maneuvering the ropes course.

They are beginning their careers and finishing up their education, with a different outlook on life than in the 1990s when they were campers. Hertsman said attending Seeds of Peace in 1994 motivated her to get involved in world events.

“This is a chance to get back in touch where it all started,” said Hertsman, one of two alumni chosen to monitor the news during the camp and distribute articles.

Yaron Avni, a 24-year-old Israeli who spent time in the Israeli Army intelligence, said the Gaza pullout is a painful time in Israel’s history. Many of the settlers have known no other home.

“Still, it’s something we have to do and it’s for the best,” he said.

For Hani Alser, who attended Seeds of Peace in 1999, the withdrawal could have profound implications. Alser, 21, grew up in Gaza but hasn’t been back home for three years because of travel restrictions on the area since he began studying in Jordan.

He is optimistic that the pullout means he will finally be able to see his parents and the 1-year-old brother he’s never met.

“I hope I’ll be able to go home,” he said. “But I’m afraid this might take a long time, one or two years after the withdrawal, to see my parents.”

Read this article at Fox News »

Featured Go-Getter: Ben Losman
Make Mama Proud

Ben Losman

• Communications Manager and Facilitation Trainer
• Ashoka’s Youth Venture, UnLtd India, and Seeds of Peace
• BS, Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, Marketing and International Business, 2006
• Current City: Mumbai, India

BY LEON LINDSTROM | Let’s straighten this out: you went to a business school—as an undergrad—so you could go into the NGO world? You’re not the first person to decide on management education as a tool for public service, but did you really settle on that plan as a high-schooler?

Ben LosmanI can’t claim credit for such sage foresightchalk it up to advice from my dad. In high school, I had no idea what I wanted my career path to look like. I found it unfair and constricting that we had to choose so early. My social conscience was strong but vague; I knew I wanted to do “good,” but didn’t know how. Volunteering had always been a big part of my life, and with that, I’d come to see that good intentions aren’t enough to make real impact. My dad is an entrepreneur. His advice: “get a good head for business on your shoulders so you can enter the non-profit sector and actually be competent and effective.” As a suburban high school hippie who, at the time, saw all corporations as part of the evil empire, this made sense to me.

Do you have a sense for what your undergrad background did for you, relative to, say, what the liberal-arts universities of some of the other folks on this site did for their graduates?

My business education was solid, but textbookit didn’t push me to think too far outside of the box. Now that I’ve been working for a few years, I realize that the main focus of instruction should have been on creative problem solving.

Institutionally, there was little attempt to spark a social conscience within the student bodythere were plenty of student clubs that volunteered in the local community, but there was no academic discourse on the role business plays in social change. In my eyes, this was a wasted opportunity.

And here’s where I have to make a disclaimerUMD has made huge strides since I graduated, particularly through a partnership with Ashoka U, a program that seeks to transform the campus into an ecosystem that fosters changemaking.

My business undergrad gave me a prestigious diploma, a textbook understanding of business, and some good connections. But the classes that were the most important to my intellectual development were a) Dissecting Shakespeare’s Use of Language and b) Advanced African Drumming.

The first job out of college: occasionally rewarding, usually frustrating. How was yours?

Mostly frustrating. The organization was divided by annoying internal politics, my work often seemed pointless (I had tight deadlines for deliverables that were of no value to clients), and it dawned on me that much of what we did as an environmental organization was greenwashing. The culture stifled new ideas from junior staff. I shouldn’t have put in eight months there, but someone had told me that it’d look bad on my resume to leave my first full-time job before working the better part of a year. And I had become close with other junior staff. Plus, all my other friends were unhappy with their respective jobs, so it seemed natural to commiserate when we got together to watch The Wire. But that all ended one glorious day—the day I found out I’d been accepted as a counselor at Seeds of Peace.

Tell us about Seeds of Peace and where that’s taken you.

Seeds of Peace brings together young people from across international conflict lines to experience cross-cultural dialogue and coexistence. The flagship program is its summer camp in Maine; teenagers from the Middle East (Israel, Palestine, Egypt, and Jordan) and South Asia (India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan) come together to spend the summer living with the people that, in many cases, they’ve been taught to distrust or hate. They play sports and make art together, sleep in the same cabins, and complain about the food together. Part of every day is dedicated to small-group dialogue focused on their respective conflicts, which is facilitated by experts in mediation.

My first summer with Seeds of Peace shook me to the core. I grew up in a liberal American Jewish household; before camp, I was confident that I understood the conflicts in the Middle East and South Asiaand that I held progressive viewpoints. The intense conversations and interactions I had with the campers quickly made me realize that I had no grasp of the reality on the ground. As the campers began to examine their own identities and develop intimate cross-conflict relationships, my respect for these young people grew into something that continues to guide me in my career and life path.

After my first summer at Seeds, I began working for Ashoka’s Youth Venture, an organization that enables young people to lead their own projects and initiatives for social change, at Ashoka’s headquarters in DC. At the core of this approach is the belief that young people can and will create systemic change when provided the opportunity and support. I saw parallels to Seeds of Peace and began working on a partnership.

In 2008, I returned to Seeds camp and ran “I, Changemaker,” a workshop series with the South Asians based on the concept of youth social entrepreneurship as a means towards peacebuilding. Together, the Indians and Pakistanis examined the social issues they all face in their respective communities and explored ways in which they could unite and make change happen. Throughout the course of the series, the Seeds mapped out their own social ventures, several of which had team members from both sides of the border.

After camp, I moved to Bombay to work with Ashoka’s Youth Venture India. In addition to the Seeds partnership, I took on responsibilities within Youth Venture’s marketing, strategy, and programming. I’ve never learned so much so quicklynot only from the team I worked with, but from the young people we support.

As I began working with Seeds alumni on the ground in Bombay, I realized that few of them actually planned on launching the social ventures they had designed over the summer. They had been too far removed from their home communities when making their detailed plans—they lacked the community groundwork that is critical for developing a social venture.

This was a key learning for me when Seeds of Peace invited me back to lead the program for the returning campers in 2009. Instead of focusing exclusively on planning social ventures, my team and I expanded the concept of changemaking to something much broader. The campers set goals for making change happen at camp (a supportive environment with all resources available), within themselves (to grow into the people they want to become), and in their home communities. They returned home with measurable, achievable goalssomething accessible and personally meaningful to them. Now I’m back in Bombay again working with Ashoka’s Youth Venture India, Seeds of Peace, and another organization called UnLtd India. Youth Venture enables young people to take their first steps into the world of leading social change; UnLtd supports people who have already taken that step and now are ready to scale and sustain. The close relationship between Youth Venture and UnLtd has given birth to a pipeline of Venturers who, in looking to scale their projects, go on to become UnLtd investees.

You seem to have worked for Seeds of Peace in a few capacities—and taken advantage of some opportunities to connect to work with other organizations as well. Was there a master plan here, or did it just happen?

As the last weeks of my first summer at Seeds drew to a close, I began to panic. Camp had made me realize that I could—and needed to—love my work, create impact, and be a part of something bigger than myself. I had no idea how I could find another job that excited and fulfilled me year-round. So I sat down with one of my friends, a former Seeds counselor who had been at the same point a few years ahead of me. She helped me broadly identify my interest areas—which were (and still are) youth empowerment, conflict resolution, environmental sustainability, and social entrepreneurship (which, though I didn’t know what it meant, sounded cool).

The next step was to explore, connect to, and contact as many organizations and companies working in these areas as possible. I started asking other Seeds staff for guidance; it was amazing to be surrounded by so many brilliant, passionate people with similar interests—having access to their networks opened my eyes to amazing work around the world that I might not otherwise have known about. Ultimately, I found Youth Venture when I moved back to the DC area. That led to the partnership with Seeds, which led to the opening at Youth Venture India, which led to the position at UnLtd India.

The short answer to the question is that I had no master plan, just a gut drive to explore and learn from inspirational people and situations. Because I was embedded in networks of perpetual idea-generators and I stayed flexible, I was able to find opportunities to dive head-first into things that piqued my passion.

In your various escapades, what have you come across that has impressed you?

The central belief of Ashoka is that everyone can be a changemaker; you simply have to give yourself permission to make change happen and then act upon it. I’ve had the privilege of meeting people who arrived at and acted upon this self-belief years ago; these are the social entrepreneurs who are now creating systemic social change across the world, whether by making Tanzania safe from mines using sniffer rats (Bart Weejens of Apopo) or revolutionizing care for the patients in Calcutta’s state-run mental institutions (Ratna Ray of Anjali).

But for me, it’s sometimes more impressive to witness the birth of the self-belief that enables people to lead change. That’s one of the main reasons I work with young people.

Bombay is a city deeply divided along class, communalist, and political lines. Youth Venture reaches out to young people from all over the city and has created a community of changemakers—young people who are taking action within their own spheres of influence. So at any given YV workshop, you’ll see a cross-section of the city—young leaders from the slums working alongside students from prestigious universities and people who never finished grade school because they had to bring in money to feed their family. The fact that each Venturer is making change happen within his/her own community acts as a social equalizer. This is the only venue I’ve seen for people to come together across this city’s divisions and connect to each other as equals.

Equally as amazing are the Youth Venturers we support in Songadh, a rural tribal area in Gujurat. Their Ventures are focused on fulfilling the basic needs of their villages, and what they’ve accomplished is incredible. Many of them have mobilized their community members and negotiated with the government to electrify their villages, build dams to harvest rainwater, and create roads where there were none before—often creating jobs for their fellow villagers in the process. Youth Venture offered resources and knowledge, but more than anything, these young people just needed to know that someone believed in their capacity to lead change—that was the spark that enabled them to take action.

What have you become good at?

Challenging the work we do by asking uncomfortable questions—are we imposing change on the groups we work with, or are we enabling them to unlock their own agency for making change? Are we treating the people we work with as beneficiaries, or are we setting up sustainable systems so that, eventually, these people can take the reins?

I’ve also become fascinated by groups and group dynamics. I’m developing my skills as a facilitator.

Looking down the road, what are you working toward?

I feel like I’ve found my path. Within Bombay, I want to create more spaces for people to come together across social divisions through dialogue, music, and sports.

Ultimately, I think an MBA will give me the foundation I need to support young changemakers—much of it comes from common sense and networks, but I want to have the technical knowledge to help people scale and sustain their initiatives at my fingertips.

Do you have any lessons for folks that getting out of school and either thinking about what to do or trying to do it?

When recruiting new Youth Venturers, we ask young people two major questions: (1) What burns you about society? and (2) Do you have the courage to stand up and do something about it?

Start with the first question. Identify your passions and interests (it helps to do this with someone who knows you well); create a broad list of topics and issues that you can read and say to yourself, “I’d be excited to dedicate myself to at least one of these things.” Then start exploring the work that’s being done to address those issues. Using your issues as anchor points, cast a wide net—ask friends, family, professors, etc. for leads, ideas, and connections. Search for organizations and companies doing interesting work (idealist.org is my go-to starting point). Don’t filter the results by geography; you might find amazing work in a place to which you’d never move—use this as a stepping stone to discover new ideas and connections.

That’s the hard part. Once you start finding people doing work that excites you, reach out to them and strike up a conversation, even if they’re not offering any immediate job openings. Stay flexible, curious, and eager to get in over your head.

Once you choose to dedicate yourself to something, there will inevitably be days you question your choice. If you experience too many of these days in a row (if your work is making you compromise yourself and what you value), find something better, pack up, and leave—don’t rationalize away your gut instinct. At the same time, though, genuine challenges are often potential opportunities for you to grow. Clear your head, talk to someone you respect, and decide whether you’re facing a compromise of self or a challenge to be tackled.

Are you makin’ mama proud?

Just asked her over gChat, her response: “smiley face heart exclamation point.” I think that’s a yes.

Common Mideast ground
The New York Daily News

BY AMY SACKS | They grew up only miles apart, but Koby Sadan and Fadi Elsalameen never dreamed they could ever be friends.

Yesterday, Elsalameen, who is Palestinian, and Sadan, an Israeli, stood side by side at a Palm Sunday service at Manhattan’s Marble Collegiate Church. There, they shared their childhood experiences of mutual hatred for each other’s nationalities and expressed their dreams for peace in the Middle East.

“I grew up to believe the Israelis hated us, [and that] the only reason they came to Palestine was to kick us out,” said Elsalameen, 18, who is studying political science at Earlham College in Indiana.

Sadan, 21, had similar sentiments. “From the age of zero, I learned there are Arabs in the world who hate us, and it is their life mission to take us away from our life and from our country,” he said. Sadan, who lives in Tel Aviv, recently finished serving in the Israeli Army and is applying to U.S. colleges.

After completing their education, both men hope to return home and become leaders. As the current leaders of their respective homelands continue to search for a lasting peace, the two friends strive to be role models and stress dialogue as the only way for Palestinians and Israelis to understand each other.

“The way to fight the animosity present in the Middle East is to wage a war on animosity,” Sadan said. “In a war you need soldiers—we are the soldiers. The more soldiers you have, the more chance you have to win the war.”

Elsalameen and Sadan visited the church through the nonprofit Seeds of Peace, which helps teenagers from regions of conflict throughout the world to learn the skills to live in peace. Each attended the one-month summer camp program in Maine, where they learned—through sports, dialogue and conflict resolution—to coexist.

“By being with friends like Fadi who are also Arabs, I learned to see the beauty of the Arab people,” Sadan said.

Sadan and Elsalameen also agree that these days it is difficult for Jews and Arabs to sit at the same table without a mediator.”Seeds of Peace is the only place where Palestinians and Israelis are treating each other like people,” Elsalameen said. “At the end of camp, you learn to see it from the other side—it helped us become friends.”

Unique camp brings teens together
Chavurah

BY DORIS ABRAMSON | Sunday, December 14, was a sunny but very cold day. Inside the Washington, Conn. home of Pat and Dick Abrams it couldn’t be warmer.

The room was filled with about 40 Jews, Christians and Muslims attending a gathering for an international project called “Seeds of Peace.” The program, now going into its fifth year, brings 13- to 15-year-olds from opposing sides of the conflict in the Middle East and the Balkans to a summer camp in Maine where they get to know one another in a relaxed and supportive environment. The aim is a simple one: to build friendships between teenagers who have been taught all their lives to hate and distrust one another, and to use these new friendships to foster communication, negotiation, and interchange so that they can better understand each other’s perspectives on the important issues that divide them.

Conflict Resolution

The program emphasizes the importance of developing non-violent mechanisms for resolving conflicts through education, discussion and emotional growth with competitive and co-operative activities. Young Palestinians, who were accustomed to throwing rocks at their adversaries, are coached in new skills of throwing an American baseball and football. Stones that they used to hurl when they were at home are used here to establish footholds in the steep climbing wall where an Israeli is taught to hold the rope for a Palestinian and vice versa. They play tennis and soccer together. They paint their own peace posters. They were given the monumental job of writing their own Peace Treaty which John Wallach, the founder, plans to present to the heads of the concerned governments.

“Seeds of Peace” has brought together over 300 male and female teenagers from Israel, the West Bank, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. No government funds are used, only tax-deductible charitable contributions. They don’t want government interference. Campers are selected in a competitive process; the only prerequisite is that they must have a working knowledge of English. Each candidate is recommended by his or her school and then asked to write on the subject, “Why I Want to Make Peace with the Enemy.” In Israel, Jordan and Morocco, the essays are judged by the Ministry of Education. In Egypt, the West Bank, Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, they are judged by a mixed panel of officials and private citizens. The final step of the selection is a personal interview. Candidates are awarded extra points if they demonstrate skill in speaking English. Points are also awarded to children from refugee camps or other underprivileged backgrounds.

Conducted under the supervision of professional American, Middle Eastern and Balkan facilitators, the conflict resolution sessions focus on teaching tools of making peace—listening skills, empathy, respect, effective negotiating skills, self confidence and hope.

Sad Stories

A two-day orientation and seminar takes place at the John F. Kennedy Shul at Harvard with the Director of the Centre for Social and Economic Policy in the Middle East. Each of them is asked to speak about the ‘bad things that have happened to the good people they know.’ One after another, the youngsters tell tales of friends or relatives who have been killed in the Arab-Israeli or Bosnian conflict. The stories were harrowing, even producing tears among the participants and the invited audience. Shouq Tarawneh from Amman, Jordan was one of the campers who spoke very eloquently to us. She has been to the summer camp for three consecutive summers, living and sleeping in wooden bunks with the first Israelis she ever met. An extraordinary young woman, she is a senior at Gunnery and is now applying to several top colleges in the States. She told us she was taught to hate Jews. They are the enemy. After completing her stint at the camp, everything changed for her. When she went home, she conducted seminars at the schools in her area and used the format she learned at camp. She truly feels she has made an impact. That’s what “Seeds of Peace” is all about.

Common Ground

Hiba Darwish, a tenth grader from Beit-Jala, just outside Bethlehem, told us how she invited her Israeli friend home for supper. Her mother liked the girl and told her she could invite her again. She tells her friends at home all about her experiences and tries to change their attitudes towards Israelis. She said it isn’t always easy. Roy Cohen, an Israeli from Ashdod, in the ninth grade, is a delightful young man with a wonderful sense of humor. He told us how they went on hikes and played competitive sports and participated in the camp-wide ‘color war.’ The teams pitted against each other, one wearing black t-shirts and the other red. He said that there were no gold, silver or bronze medals for the winners. Instead, the victorious team gets to jump in the lake first. The losers have to wait their turn. He recalled discovering how much he had in common with his Egyptian, Jordanian, Moroccan, Palestinian, Qatari and Tunisian fellow campers. He told us that when the terrorist attack took place in Jerusalem’s Mahaneh Yehuda market, their new Arab friends comforted them—a thing one never imagined could be possible.

Roy told the story of how angry he got when he and a few friends were pasting posters for a scouts ceremony. “A man asked, “Why aren’t you pasting posters that say ‘Kill the Arabs?’ I told him, ‘Because I just hate that kind of horrible poster.’ My friends did not argue with him; they just told him that, ‘The scouts are not political.’ I told my friends that was the stupidest answer I ever heard. And they understood one of the differences between us. I’ll stand up and argue against prejudice. But my friends, who have never met the other side, won’t argue on behalf of the Arabs.”

Future Leaders

Everyone at this gathering was so moved by these marvelous kids. They are the future. John Wallach believes that these youngsters have such extraordinary qualities that some are bound to rise to positions of leadership in their respective countries. When they do, they will have trusted friends in high places in other countries, and will be able to talk with each other.

Wallach quoted Isaiah. “The wolf shall live with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf with the lion and the fatling together, and the little child shall lead them.” Perhaps that is the most important lesson of all: after all these years, the emotional and moral power of children can still be harnessed to point the way for adults. To paraphrase Warren Christopher, who said, by reaching across communities, these children are resolving a conflict that for too long has divided their peoples. It is their spirit, their lives, their dreams, their future. Let us not betray them.

John Wallach, president and founder of “Seeds of Peace” left a high-powered journalism career to launch this program. He had been a White House correspondent for thirty years. He broke the story of the CIA mining Nicaraguan harbors and covered the Middle East. He won the National Press Club Award and the Overseas Press Club Award for uncovering the “arms for hostages” story that led to the Iran-Contra scandal.

Personal Destiny

He didn’t feel satisfied being, in his words, a “fly on the wall.” Perhaps he felt a sense of personal destiny because his parents had escaped the Holocaust. Perhaps he has always had an instinct for seeing beyond superficial differences because Catholic priests had guided his parents through the Pyrenees to safety. He instituted a program he called “Citizen Diplomacy” at the Chantauqua Institute to bring together ordinary Russians and Americans to search for common ground. For this work, Wallach received the Medal of Friendship, the former Soviet Union’s highest civilian award, from then president Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991. He is also the Executive Director of the Eli Wiesel Foundation for Humanity.

Amgad Naguib from Cairo wrote the following anthem:

People of peace, rejoice, rejoice,
For we have united into one voice
A voice of peace and hate of war
United hands have built a bridge
between two shores …

We on the shores
Have torn down the wall
We stand hand in hand
As we watch the bricks fall
We learn from the past
And fear not what’s ahead
I know I’ll not walk alone
But with a friend instead …

Article appeared in Chavurah (Jewish Federation of Greater Waterbury and Northwestern Connecticut).

Reasons to be hopeful
Washington Jewish Week

Seeds of Peace grads carry on

BY BRUCE KATZ | On Friday night, the people who gathered for Shabbat services at Kensington’s Temple Emanuel, a Reform Congregation, heard something they hadn’t heard in a very long time: reasons to be hopeful about the future of the Middle East.

In a voice filled with passion and conviction, guest speaker Bobbie Gottschalk, executive vice-president of Seeds of Peace, told them about Israeli and Arab teenagers getting to know and understand each other as people instead of as “the enemy.”

This is no mean feat, Gottschalk reminded her audience. “More people in the Middle East—on all sides—are being trained for war than for peace. Generations of Arabs and Israelis have grown up knowing nothing but fear, mistrust, and hatred of each other.”

How does one begin to break this cycle? First, she said, you try to influence the shape of the future by talking to those who will inhabit it—the children. Second, you limit your objectives to what is possible: “our goal is not to make peace, but to get the teens to really listen to each other.”

This summer, the fifth since Seeds of Peace was formed, provided powerful evidence of how challenging these goals are, given the current situation in the Middle East. It also showed that the effort is worth every second of doubt, anxiety and tears.

Seeds of Peace brings teens from the Middle East to rural Maine where they spend several weeks living together, engaging in sports, theatre and Internet instruction, and learning “co-existence” skills. The boys and girls come from diverse backgrounds: Israel, Palestinian controlled territories, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Qatar; they are Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze; Russian immigrants; they are religious and secular, their homes rich and powerful, settlements and refugee camps.

For most of the kids, Gottschalk said, the experience of being face to face with “the enemy” is like being on an emotional roller coaster. There is a day or so of normal wariness at the beginning, after which everything feels very easy. The teens have fun together, become teammates, sing, dance—in short, they do what teenagers everywhere do, and they find themselves wondering why peace seems to be so difficult for their parents to achieve.

At this point, when the kids start to become comfortable with each other, life at camp suddenly gets very hard, Gottschalk said. “This is when the kids begin to really open up to one another, and what they have to say is not always very pleasant. They talk about family members and friends who have been maimed or killed. They talk about the lessons they’ve been learning all their lives about how terrible the other side is and how none of them can be trusted. It is at this stage that the stereotypes and preconceptions begin to crack and real communication begins.”

The breakthroughs made in Maine seem to survive the trip back home. Most of the teens who have attended the Seeds of Peace camp (they call themselves “graduates”) continue to stay in touch with each other via e-mail, regular mail, phone calls and even visits.

This past summer, however, tested the program in an entirely new way. Ten days into the session, a bomb went off in an open market in Jerusalem. Never before had there been a terrorist incident while the camp was in session. The counselors had to let the campers know what had happened, of course, but how would the kids respond? Would everything fall apart?

News of the bombing brought shock and tears from the Israeli children who feared family members or friends might have been casualties. The Palestinian teens, for their part, were stunned, knowing that Hamas had claimed responsibility for the blast. The counselors feared the worst. But then the Palestinians made the first move. Spontaneously, they crossed the room to hug the Israelis and express their feelings of sorrow and guilt. The Israelis in turn accepted their friends’ sympathy, reassuring them that it was not their friends’ fault. The rest of the day, Gottschalk said, was spent with the kids supporting each other.

The summer session ended well, Gottschalk told the people at Temple Emanuel, with the kids expressing their feelings through music, poetry, art, and sculpture. But her story didn’t end there, for within a few weeks of the children’s return to the Middle East, another bomb went off in Jerusalem, this time in a place well-known as a hangout for Israeli teenagers. Immediately, Gottschalk said, e-mail went flying back and forth among the camp graduates and Arab campers wrote to see if their Jewish friends were hurt and to condemn the outrage. She read excerpts from the letters to the congregants.

In language that made many in the audience grow teary-eyed, Israeli and Arab children talked about how hard it was to be back home, how frustrated and confused they felt at the continued violence and the friends who refused to listen to their stories about their experiences in Maine. But they also talked about the successes they’ve had in opening up other people’s minds and the hope they still feel.

“I’m optimistic about these kids,” Gottschalk said. “No one will ever again be able to tell them that all Israelis hate us and that all Palestinians are bad. But most kids there have never known peace …”

She paused. “My hope is that one day some of the kids who have been through Seeds of Peace will be the leaders of their countries, and they won’t hesitate when the time comes to shake someone’s hand in peace.”

The History Project: Inspiring Indian and Pakistani Children to Rethink the Past
The Diplomat

A new project questions India and Pakistan’s shared historical narrative.

Three young Pakistanis – Qasim Aslam, Ayyaz Ahmad and Zoya Siddiqui – are providing schoolchildren in India and Pakistan with an opportunity to critically analyze, evaluate and question significant events in their nations’ shared history and heritage.

The History Project, comprising excerpts from three Indian textbooks and nine Pakistani textbooks, provides students an illuminating comparison of the ways that key historical events – leading up to partition – are taught in schools in both countries.

Last month, Aslam, Ahmad and Siddiqui visited four schools in Mumbai – officially launching The History Project in India. Next month, the trio plans to introduce the project to schools across Pakistan, in the hope that it will spark healthy debate, underpinned by curiosity, impartiality, and an open-minded look at the tumultuous epoch that is India and Pakistan’s shared history.

According to Aslam, the inspiration for The History Project came in 2005 from Feruzan Mehta, the then Country Director (India) for Seeds of Peace, an international NGO that seeks to inspire and train new leaders from conflict zones to build a more peaceful future. The inspiration grew in the ensuing years, and Aslam and Ahmad finally decided to make their shared dream a reality two years ago.

In an exclusive interview with The Diplomat, the founders of The History Project speak about the laborious process that went into the compilation of the book, the importance of a solid artistic element to complement the book and their experience of formally introducing their project to children in India last month.

What inspired you to undertake The History Project?

Qasim Aslam: It informally started off around 12 years ago when we met Indians across the border for the first time in our lives. We were at this conflict resolution camp [Seeds of Peace, hosted in Maine, USA], where a dozen Indians and Pakistanis were brought to live together for three weeks.

Over the course of that time, in addition to playing sports and indulging in other activities together, we found history to be a recurring discussion in our interaction. In some cases, the conversations resulted in flared emotions. Over those three weeks, we didn’t quite reconcile our versions of history, but we did find it in ourselves to respect the alternative reality, its existence, and the fact that it was as authentic as ours.

In an effort to scale this process, as it is super expensive to fly a couple dozen kids from the region to the U.S., we came up with the concept of The History Project; which, in essence, is taking the process to the kids themselves.

Was compiling the book a difficult process?

Qasim Aslam: In retrospect, it was. It definitely was. We probably underestimated the task at hand when we set out to accomplish it. The first few months, we went around from expert to expert, trying to finalize the direction of the project. Everyone seemed to have an opinion – a legit, daunting contribution that sent us back to the drawing board more than once.

We finally reached a conclusion after four months of extensive deliberations. Mid-way through the project, we realized that we couldn’t put out a book in pure text. We’d lose the interest of our target readership, kids between the ages of 12 and 15. The prospect of finding a decent illustrator turned out to be a journey in its own.

And then came the grand finale of selling such an idea to the Indian High Commission for the purpose of visas, coordinating with schools across the border and a dozen other hoops that somehow got sorted out and we found ourselves in Mumbai one fine Monday morning in April this year.

Zoya, as the illustrator, tell us a little about the artistic element of the book. What did you visualize initially for the book and what did you think would work for your audience?

Zoya Siddiqui: I knew from the very beginning that the task would not be easy. An illustrator’s job is to very clearly show and reaffirm an opinion, whereas our idea for the whole project was to refrain from propagating our personal opinions and simply reproducing what information already exists in textbooks/history. The idea of a faceless man immediately struck as the solution to the problem.

The faceless man essentially depicts what we, the team, are doing: displaying established opinions as clothes or symbols that can be easily adopted, worn and shed. The faceless man has no symbols or opinions of his own, but he theatrically demonstrates both histories. History is thus shown not as absolute truth or “fact”, but rather as variable opinions and stereotypes. The truth is unknowable, like the faceless man.

Do you think children in Pakistan and India will be able to formulate their own opinions about their shared history after reading the book?

Zoya Siddiqui: Actually, we have not aimed for the children to formulate an opinion on Indo-Pakistani history when they read the book. Our goal is to trigger a thought process, to unsettle the students and confuse them, which is somewhat like what we went through after our Seeds of Peace camp experience. Even after all these years, we ourselves are struggling for answers.

However, the struggle is good, important and healthy. Having answers and well-formulated opinions, I personally believe, is dangerous. We wish for the students to get started on that journey to critical thinking, beyond textbooks.

Ayyaz, you and your team visited four schools in Mumbai last month. What was the response?

Ayyaz Ahmad: The response was phenomenal. The children and the teachers both were extremely interested to know and understand the Pakistani perspective. They also had a number of questions about Pakistan beyond the scope of history. They were quite curious about how Indian history was viewed in Pakistan and also about the cultural similarities between the two countries.

How did you go about contacting schools in India to introduce the book? Were they initially hesitant?

Ayyaz Ahmad: In India, Seeds of Peace put us in touch with the local schools. In Pakistan, we are reaching out to different schools through friends involved with educational institutions.

When will you introduce the book to schools in Pakistan?

Ayyaz Ahmad: We have already started a round of presentations in Pakistan. In the next month, we hope to visit a number of schools to introduce the initiative.

Through your research, what were some of the major discrepancies that you found in the textbooks?

Ayyaz Ahmad: The primary difference is in the way different aspects of the same event are highlighted. This also became our focus as we worked on the book. The idea was that instead of imposing another narrative or our opinion, we would simply lay out what has already been written, to show that history is extremely dynamic and is a combination of numerous perspectives.

What do you hope your initiative achieves?

Ayyaz Ahmad: The History Project initiative has a two-fold objective; first, to enable the youth in conflict-stricken countries to have access to the other side of conflict history in their formative years. And second, to get youth to question the generally accepted stereotypes (not just pertaining to history) which form the foundation of their ideologies. We hope that the books will instill in the youth, the importance of recognizing alternative perspectives; that there is always another side to every story.

Read Sonya Rehman’s article at The Diplomat  ››

Thanksgiving seminar focuses US Seeds on role of American leadership abroad

NEW YORK | After stuffing themselves with food and gratitude on Thanksgiving, 20 American Seeds traveled to New York City to stuff themselves with food for thought.

This year’s Thanksgiving Seminar brought timely and challenging issues to the table. Seeds in attendance heard from a diverse group of older graduate Seeds to get perspectives on the US elections and the current escalation of violence in Gaza and Israel.

American Seed Coordinator Sarah Brajtbord designed the event as a launching point for a new chapter in American Seeds programming.

“Historically, American Seeds programming has focused, rightly so, on what is happening ‘out there’ in regions of conflict,” said Brajtbord, herself an American Seed from 2006. “Now we are taking the next step by pushing Seeds to connect the US to the international and the international to the US, and examine the complexities of US-international relations.”

Brajtbord believes that the event set an exciting tone for the rest of the year in American programming. Topics in current events helped the Seeds discuss deeper, underlying questions about their roles as Americans.

“What do you think America’s role is in the Middle East?” asked one of the graduate Seeds who addressed the group. Bashar, a Palestinian Graduate Seed living in Israel, posed the question to get the Seeds to look inward. It was a question many of the American Seeds had thought about at Camp, without directly addressing as a group.

“The conversation following Bashar’s talk really inspired me to take my role as an American Seed seriously,” said Erica. “It pushed me to define who I want to be in the Seeds community and in my community as well.”

Brajtbord says that the American Seeds’ Camp experience is a dramatically eye-opening experience, and that it is important to help Seeds manifest that experience in their lives back home.

“These are future American leaders, no matter where they go in their lives. We have to localize and ground their experience in the American context while also doing justice to the world-opening experience of Camp.”

The event helped enrich Seeds’ understanding of nuanced issues.

“The seminar added a lot of complexity to my understanding of U.S. foreign policy and what I think we should and should not be doing in other countries,” said Sarah, an American Seed.

Mona, an Egyptian Graduate Seed who covered the Arab Spring for The New York Times, spoke to the Seeds in person about her experiences as a journalist and her views on the US role in the Middle East. She challenged the Seeds to understand that there are always more than two sides to a story—and to a conflict.

From Kabul, Afghan Graduate Seed and journalist Mujib addressed the US elections from an Afghan perspective and shared the local outlook on President Obama’s plans to withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014.

“When I’d talked to the Afghan girls in my bunk about American involvement, they had wanted the US out immediately,” said American Seed Kalyani. “But Mujib said that many citizens didn’t feel their government was stable enough for the U.S. to leave as planned.”

The timing of this year’s seminar meant that violence in Israel and Gaza, as well as its effects in the Seeds community, weighed heavily on Seeds’ hearts and minds. Two Seeds of Peace staff members who run Israeli and Palestinian programs—and who are Seeds themselves—explained how they are adapting their work in light of the violence and how American Seeds can help to support their peers.

“The whole discussion reinforced my image of Seeds as a place where they do not pretend to have all the answers to the issues but are really willing to help you work through the tough problems,” said American Seed Francesca after the event.

Brajtbord was impressed with the way American Seeds focused on current events from international as well as domestic perspectives.

“Rather than just talking about US elections as domestic issues, for example, the conversation focused on intersections between the domestic and the international. Even when the discussion shifted to current events in the Middle East, conversation kept coming back to what the US is and is not doing.”

While they may feel physically distanced from conflicts around the world, American Seeds have a unique opportunity for engagement.

“Even if we do not have the resources to go across the world to Palestine and Israel and help out there, simply being active members of our community in this issue and others will be beneficial to conflicts worldwide,” said American Seed Anour.

Living with the enemy in the Gaza Strip
The Arabist

Yousef Bashir, 22, lives with a bullet lodged near his spine. “When I imagine myself without the bullet in my back I ask myself would I be the same?” he said. “That bullet talks to me and I talk to it everyday. It is a very personal thing that I go through,” he continued. “I know that it was put there to destroy my life. I look at it and I say I am not destroyed yet.”

Bashir has very personal ties to the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. He grew up in the Gaza Strip next to the Israeli settlement Kfar Darom, which was evacuated in 2005. The battle lines ran right through his house. When the second Palestinian Intifada broke out, Israeli soldiers moved into his home. Bashir was 11 years old at the time. His father, Khalil Bashir, refused to leave the house and so the family – Yousef Bashir, his grandmother, parents and his siblings – spent five years living with the soldiers, who occupied the top two floors.

The soldiers tried to make Khalil Bashir leave the house so many times, Yousef Bashir said. But his father would say, “Why don’t you leave this house, this is my house.” His father was afraid if they left they would never see their home again.

The Israelis divided his house into areas A, (full Palestinian control ), B (Palestinian civil control and joint security control with Israel) and C (near full Israeli control) – just as the West Bank had been divided as part of the Oslo Agreements. In Bashir’s house, Area A was the room in which they were allowed to stay on the ground floor. Area B included the bedrooms, kitchen and bathrooms. Area C was the second and third floors of the house. Bashir never asked for permission from his parents to do anything, he said. But he had to get permission from the Israelis to go outside or to watch a soccer game on television, he said. “I had to negotiate with them.”

It was not an easy time. Most of the soldiers were extremely rude. “Most of them were harsh,” Bashir said. “Most of them were at war.” Camouflage and barbed wire covered the roof and there was a machine gun and security camera posted on top of the house. Bashir said he had seen the bodies of a number of young dead Palestinian men near his home. The circumstances of their deaths unclear. Violence was no stranger. His second oldest brother was shot in the leg, his father too was shot.

Then it was his turn. On February 18, 2004, workers from the United Nations visited Bashir’s family to see how they were coping with their living situation. After 20 minutes, the Israelis ordered the U.N. to leave. Bashir and his father walked the U.N. workers back to their car. “As we were slowly reversing we heard a single shot fired,” said Stuart Shepherd, who had the time was with the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. “Yousef basically just fell to the ground immediately, just crumpled.” He was 15 years old at the time. The bullet stopped near his spine. “Yousef had his back to the Israeli observation tower and was waving goodbye…at the time when the shot was fired,” according to Shepherd. (Disclosure: I worked with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, but not at the time Yousef Bashir was shot.)

Bashir does not know the Israeli soldier who shot him. According to media reports, the Israeli Army apologized for the shooting.

That tragedy allowed Bashir to escape the hell that the Gaza Strip has become. After Bashir was stabilized in a Gaza hospital, he was transferred to an Israeli hospital. Bashir credits the Israeli doctors with saving his life and giving him the ability to walk again. He went on to study in Ramallah, which is where I met him years ago. He later went to the United States, where he is currently studying international affairs and diplomacy. He fundraises to pay for his college tuition. He still needs physical therapy twice a week and takes pain killers.

But Bashir said everyday he chooses not to be angry, something he learned from his father who died recently from a stroke. Everyday, Bashir chooses to forgive, but it is challenge. “I hear the news, I see how the Palestinians are treated,” he said. “But deep inside me I can never find any reason to hate.” Bashir cannot return to Gaza to see the rest of the family he left behind because he is afraid the Israelis would not allow him to leave once in the occupied territory. He does not want to risk his education in the U.S. Perhaps if the Palestinians had their own state things would be different.

“We should have had a state a long time ago,” Bashir said. A state would mean more responsibility and perhaps more problems he thinks. But once you are a state, “you are responsible for everything that happens within your territory,” he added. “But it is a good thing to show the world that we want to live in a democracy… We are willing to live in peace.”

“I was never a child,” Bashir said. He was seven years old the first time the Israeli settlers came into his house. They hit his mother and destroyed everything inside the house, burning things. His family locked themselves in the living room, but his oldest brother – who was in the sixth grade then – was not able to make it into the room in time and the settlers broke his teeth.

What should happen to the settlers should the Palestinians get a state? Bashir said he is not interested in what would happen to the settlements. “I am interested in knowing how long would it take for the settlers to realize that the ultimate price for their lifestyle is my freedom.”

Bashir said that when the last group of Israeli soldiers left his family’s house in the Gaza Strip, two of the soldiers thanked his father for his unwavering determination to be a peaceful man even in the most trying times.

“At the end we got the house back and they left,” Bashir said. “We did not fight, we did not carry a weapon, we did not fire anything,” he added. “We just believed in peace… and that is how it should be in the future.”

Read Jenifer Fenton’s article at The Arabist »

Family Gathering
The Jerusalem Post

BY RYAN NADEL | JERUSALEM As the final rays of the summer sun drifted through the large windows, participants of the Seeds of Peace Cafe gathered in a luxuriously appointed room at the American Colony Hotel.

The Seeds of Peace Cafe, a program run by the organization Seeds of Peace, is a forum for individuals from Jewish, Arab and Christian communities to become acquainted with each other in an apolitical environment.

“The Cafe allows people to learn about each other’s customs,” explained Dorothy Gitter Harman, co-coordinator of the Seeds of Peace Cafe.

This event, the first since the closing of the Jerusalem center and the inaugural gathering after the summer break, featured descendants from two of the oldest and most prominent Jerusalem families—the Alamis and the Havilios.

The Seeds of Peace Cafe program was initiated last February, this being the sixth meeting. The title for the evening was “Tales of Prominent Jerusalem Families: Jewish, Christian and Muslim as told by Muhammad Alami and Abraham Havilio, Lovers of Jerusalem and Marvelous Story-Tellers.

As the participants found their seats, music floated above the conversations in the room, accenting the mixture of Arabic, Hebrew and English with a Mediterranean rhythm. Teenagers sporting the green Seeds of Peace T-shirts punctuated the mature, distinguished crowd with a sense of youth.

Harman called the program to order and reminisced about a time in Jerusalem when Arabs, Jews and Christians “lived, labored, laughed and experienced life together,” before introducing the men who lived during this period and remembered what that life was like.

“The idea is to have Jews, Muslims and Christians meet and talk about different things in which politics does not have a place, to get together and get to know each other,” said Dr. Muhammad Dajani, co-coordinator of the cafe with Harman. “We are here to talk about coexistence during a time in the past when conflict did not exist, when we lived as one.”

Avraham Havilio, 76, a man whose presence emits the type of wisdom gained through experience, then took the microphone. Speaking with sweeping hand gestures, he introduced his tales with the title, “Once Upon a Time.”

Havilio opened his presentation by expressing his belief that talking and understanding each other—even if in disagreement—is the beginning of ideological unity, “because understanding is the first step toward agreement.”

His voice filled the room as he recounted the history of his family in Jerusalem, beginning in 1265. He emphasized that his family was always involved in both the commercial and communal aspects of the city, and distributed pictures of family members and artifacts documenting his family’s illustrious Jerusalem heritage. Havilio Sweets, which was sold 10 years ago, has been a feature of the Jerusalem landscape for about 250 years. The company operated out of a small factory in Jerusalem and was sold by stores in the area.

Havilio called upon his friends in the audience to share memories of their father’s and grandfather’s era.

Dr. Ali Qleibo, himself an expert on the ancient families of Jerusalem and author of a book on the subject, told of a time when “Jerusalem was not segregated, it was one city and we coexisted as a matter of the course of life, it was a time when people interacted on a personal level.”

Another friend of Havilio’s, Albert Hazan, born in Jerusalem during the 1930s, recounted school boy adventures with Arab and Christian friends. “We would walk the streets of Jerusalem with joy, not fear,” he reminisced. “My stories of Jerusalem are the stories of the love of two boys from two different worlds.”

Hazan expressed wishful sentiment that the stories of past cross-cultural friendships “blossom into friendships of the future.”

Havilio concluded his stories and turned the microphone over to Dr. Muhammad Alami, who immediately commented that he is too much of an academic to tell stories, admitting he is “too young to know the stories firsthand, but not too young to know what society was like.”

Alami, in his early 60s, explained that historically, connection to society focused on associations with institutions, all of which were religious and created the great families of Jerusalem. However, he added, when the institutions collapsed in the 19th century, the dynamic of the families and society changed.

Alami remarked that “during the Ottoman Empire, the city was very calm” and society was unchanging and “stagnant.”

The floor was then opened to all for comments and stories. As Havilio had hoped, by the end of the evening it was clear that all in attendance had a better understanding of what Jerusalem life was once like.

As the evening concluded, attendees mingled and shared their own stories and memories of old Jerusalem. Their conversations of times past drifted into the evening sky.