Bringing together neighboring communities of young Jews & Muslims in various areas on the Holy Land, first time in their lives, for on-going deep and positive interaction. When people look each other in the eye and really meet each other - transformation happens and reluctance gives room to friendship. Citizens are empowered to actively shape their society through actually practicing it, with guidance from the Interfaith Encounter Association.
This project addresses the Jewish-Muslim coexistence challenge in the Israel. The existing ignorance of 'the other', enabling prejudices and fears, makes conflicts possible. Participants from neighboring communities, engaged in on-going deep and positive interaction self-educate to replace negative attitudes by mutual understanding, respect and trust. The group develops into a "mini-community" modeling the desired inter-communal relations, growing gradually to include the larger communities.
We bring together educators, students and parents, from Jewish and Muslim schools, as well as other young people, for exchange around issues of their religious traditions and cultures. This ensures safe, deep and positive interaction, which reveals similarities and enable constructive acknowledgement of differences, thus creating strong and lasting bonds between Jewish and Muslim communities. The impact of this approach was tested repeatedly by academic institutions. See IEA website.
The project creates an ongoing joint community of 1,000 young Jews and Muslims, from all parts of society. The groups of teens and young adults work to generate the transformation of the 70,000 people of their larger communities.
This project has provided additional documentation in a Microsoft Word file (projdoc.doc).
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