Building Bridges: NGO peacebuilding through Israeli-Palestinian youth contact

Building Bridges: NGO

Building Bridges teaches communication skills to a diverse array of young Israeli, Palestinian, and American young people through the use of skill-building activities. Students can "learn new perspectives through communication skills-building sessions as well as experiential, outdoor, and creative play workshops and day-to-day contact with each other. The activities are designed to expose participants to seven program building blocks: identity; integration; socialization; perspective; gender lens; communication; and leadership development" ("Program theory," 2014). The ultimate goal of the organization is to create a more tolerant society by changing the minds of young people. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the most longstanding and violent of recent memory. The hope is that by fostering interpersonal contact and positive feelings between the two groups and affirming one another's humanity that the future can be more peaceful, versus the current stalemate which exists today.

How does it try to achieve its goals?

Over the course of its residential programs students live together. "This promotes the breakdown of stereotypes, and fosters the development of personal relationships" ("Program theory," 2014). Creative play and learning about the unique perspective of others builds a more tolerant society one person at a time. The perspective of the program is said to be specifically gendered: all participants learn skills traditionally associated with women, such as communitarian decision-making. They also learn leadership skills. "Participants are encouraged to think about how to bring what they've learned back to their home communities, and are given tools in program planning and implementation to help them execute change projects in their home communities" ("Program theory," 2014).

What are some of the NGO critiques?

Building Bridges has faced criticism from both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide. Because of the violence which has been waged on both sides of the conflict, often by or directed against young people (many of the Palestinians involved in the intifada have been children and young Israelis were recently killed in the most recent outbreak of violence), the program's personalized perspective which emphasizes individual healing makes many people uncomfortable. The hope is that by changing individuals the larger society can be changed but it could be argued that there is a limit to the degree that major changes can be created with just one or two people. This does not necessarily mitigate the influence of violence in wider society or silence the voices of extremists on both sides. The most extreme voices are unlikely to allow their children to participate in the program. The children whose parents are willing to let them be involved in the program already have a more nuanced view of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Also, individual solutions and friendships (which already exist between Israelis and Palestinians in some quarters) do not necessarily generate macro-level solutions.

What are some of its challenges?

The program faces considerable challenges in justifying its existence, given the tensions currently existing on both sides of the issue. There are also inevitable funding and safety concerns. The children involved in the program must be assured of their safety, as must the program directors. Given that there is likely to be anger voiced on both sides, the directors of the program must be highly trained to monitor and deal with such feelings in a positive and proactive fashion. Children must be allowed to voice negative feelings when they arise and facilitators must be able to use their honesty in a positive way.

How do these challenges affect its effectiveness?

Allowing children to articulate anger is part of the process of working through these concerns. Children must also go back to the 'real world' after proceeding through the program and being able to talk about the conflict outside of the safe space created by the program. In general, "all the participants said their families were relatively supportive of the goals of the program, enough to grant permission to send them in the first place. Some participants came from extended families with previous experience sending kids to conflict resolution programs (Breeze & Feldman 113). Of course, this once again raises the question if the participants in the program are not likely to be the individuals most in need of help and support to overcome prejudice, the program might not be as effective as one might hope.