Department of Multidisciplinary Studies – Chair Person
Conflict Management & Resolution Program
at
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
Prof. Orna Braun-Lewensohn
בין ה'חוץ' לבין ה'פְּנים': השתלבות חרדים אקדמאים במשק הישראלי
The Israel Democracy Institute. Between the 'out' and the 'in': Integration of Ultra-Orthodox academics in the Israeli job market.
(Post Doc: Tehila Kalagy; Funded by The Israel Democracy Institute)
"Pass it On" Joint civic action as a way to enhance community coherence and collaboration between Bedouin and Jewish Youth in Israel
The project’s overall objective is to produce a cadre of young Palestinians/Bedouins and Jews committed to building a shared society based on the civic and democratic values of equality, human rights, tolerance and acceptance of “the other”. Joint mixed groups, which live in neighboring communities will meet regularly and will be guided to implement these values through activism and partnership. To achieve this objective, a one-year training program for Jewish and Arab educators will be implemented as the first phase of the project. The training will include different topics on direct and indirect peace education models, civic education, etc., and it will also result in the production of a theoretical and practical manual that will help in facilitating the youth groups.
(Collaboration with: Dr. Ephrat Huss, Dr. Tal Litvak Hirch, Dr. Sarah Abu-Kaf) (Funded by the Ministry of Agriculture)
PeaceMaker Educational Workshops
The Peacemaker project was established six years ago and is based on a strategic computer game which enables the player to think and act as the Israeli prime minister or as the president of the Palestinian Authority. The Israeli game aims to bring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to its end, using different tools. The Palestinian game focuses on the internal conflict within Palestinian society. After playing the computer game the class assembles, discusses the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and analyzes it or does the same for the internal Palestinian conflict. This provides the students with experience in decision making.
The first two workshops took place as 'after school activities', separately in Israeli and in Palestinian schools, and participants were 9th-12th graders. The third workshop was a joint Palestinian-Israeli meeting and took place in Israel as an 'after school activity'. The facilitators of this project were hired by Peres Center for Peace.
The ongoing evaluation of the project provided objective evidence of the key performance indicators and success criteria of the project. The evaluation tried to examine whether changes had occurred in various aspects of perceptions of the Palestinian- Israeli conflict among youth who participated in the project. That includes changes in attitudes, emotions and behaviors.