August 1, 2009

 Peace Child Israel – Fresh Start

2009-2010

 Peace Child Israel’s activity year begins today.  In the aftermath of the war in Gaza, and the subsequent fallout and impact on dialogue programs, it was not clear if the interest to continue would be maintained and what sort of changes would be required to entice teenagers to sit down together and stand up as leaders.

This organization went through serious self-reflection with regards to methodology and best practices and is getting a fresh start.  Significant changes were made in the program sequence, with a deeper investment of time on the inter-personal trust-building than before.  Another change was the introduction of  bi-lingual adaptations of existing plays such as the Cervantes “Don Quixote de la Mancha” , Saint Exupery’s “The Little Prince”, and Ephraim Kishon’s “Black on White”.  Some groups will continue with the tried-and-true formula of writing new original texts, but these, too, will be rehearsed and begun earlier in the year.  It will be exciting to learn how the “classics” will be appreciated by the youth as well as the thousands of Arab and Jewish junior high schools students who will see these plays.  Clearly, it will be easier to “book” these plays into schools which are hesitant about embracing the whole issue of Arab-Jewish coexistence in their student-body experience.  As might be expected, these hesitant school principals are in the majority in light of the greatly deteriorated and hostile relations between Arabs and Jews in the State of Israel.

The organization is setting out with some risk-taking, as it does every year, in hopes that at least 50% of the “likely” contributions will materialize.  This allows for beginning 7 new groups and finishing the second leg of a group that began its process from the Western Galilee in January, in the midst of the violence.    “The Search” will be debuted on October 1, 2009.  The balance of the 7new productions will go up in schools in January and February 2010, and we hope that this coming January will look a lot different than the last one. The teen actors will repeat their performances for students once-a-month and will conclude with a festive gala with  VIP’s  in June. 

This year PCI is beginning a cooperative effort with two organizations holding expertise in programs for teachers.  The 14 schools principals from the seven pairs of schools where Peace Child will implement the youth program have agreed to have their teachers participate in an 8-hour course.  The 56-hour accredited teachers course piloted last year will be repeated in two new locations this year at the request of the Ministry of Education.  And of course, the parents remain in the picture with 3 sessions during the year.  So, the adults are beginning to take after the kids.    A flyer about the launch of the alumni association is attached, so there is a lot going on.  Hard to believe.

Those numbers (14 school principals) could increase with a little help from our friends.

Happy Holidays, Id il-Fiter and Rosh Hashana,

 Melisse Lewine-Boskovich,

Managing Director