| |
Dear Friends,
Port cities are generally beautiful and cosmopolitan. They
also have their seedier sides and can be violent. In the past
weeks I have visited and had extensive consultations in two
such cities that are becoming increasingly important in the
work of the Institute: Amsterdam and Haifa.
At the invitation of the Institute’s friend and trainee, Mark
Boekwijt, Advisor to Amsterdam’s Mayor on the ethnic and religious
violence that has been particularly recurrent since 9/11,
the Institute ran a brief workshop for municipal officials,
police, borough presidents and other elected officials, all
of Christian, Jewish and Muslim backgrounds. Using the Institute’s
self-reflective and interactive methods and role plays, participants
explored the complexities of Dutch history, of pained as well
as idealized memories of the immigrant experience and growing
up in Holland, and tried to arrive at new positions for empathy
and shared identities that would strengthen the bonds of citizenship
between individuals and groups that are now so much in conflict.
This workshop has provided the Fellows and staff with important
insights into the problems that are so threatening to the
countries of Western Europe and how we might help. We are
now in discussion with our Dutch friends about consultations
and trainings in Holland as well as in other areas of Europe.
Our consultations on behalf of the US State Department in
Serbia and Kosovo will extend these efforts to the Balkans.
Haifa and its environs, with all of the problems of co-existence
faced by Israeli Jews of different backgrounds, by Israeli
Arabs, Bedouins, Druze and Palestinians, particularly since
2000, have struggled to maintain solidarity and increase channels
of communication. In the past years, in cooperation with municipal
officials, we have organized workshops and trainings to open
new channels of communication and cooperation. The Second
Lebanon War and the unrelenting shelling of civilians during
this past summer pointed to both the shared fate and the intense
conflict between Israel’s different groups. In consultation
with our colleagues and trainers, including Kher Albaz, Jabir
Asaqla, Yael Paller, and Chassia Chomsky Porat, we came to
the conclusion: while there have been serious set-backs, with
the feelings between Israeli Arabs and Jews, in particular,
“raw and on the table,” now it is all the more urgent to continue
and increase the training that we have made available to leaders
from these different communities over the past years. Representatives
of the Haifa municipality who invited this consultation share
our sense of urgency and have offered the Institute matching
funds for this work.
I am sorry to bring to your attention this troubling news
at the moment when we still ring in and celebrate the New
Year. There is good news to share, as well. Our projects in
other parts of the world continue to flourish at the hands
of our committed Fellows. And our devoted Board members and
friends have been so generous in providing the financial resources
with which to make all of this possible. The beginning of
the New Year signals the beginning of our three year capacity
building process and a $3.2 million dollar budget to enable
us to respond to at least some of the demands that are being
made for our services. I look forward to telling you more
in the coming months about our plans to expand our program
and administrative staff and our partnerships in different
parts of the world to meet these new challenges.
Hillel |
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
| |
HADAR
Community Development Project
by Yael Paller
In mid-November, we made further progress in our Hadar community
development project. We have held series of meetings where
Israeli Jews and Arabs, some of whom were neighbors for many
years meeting face to face for the first time. More> |
|
CAMBODIA
by Adam Saltsman
Since the last update, the IIMHC has continued to work with
one of its local partner organization, the Center for Social
Development, as they bring the Youth Education Community Development
(YECD) pilot project to a close. After conducting a series
of dialogues in rural communities... More>
|
 |
After
the War: Sustained Dialogues Continue in Yaad-Miaar
by Chassia Chomsky-Porat
Jabir Asaqla, the Arab facilitator of the group and I have
invited the participants of the Yaad-Miaar dialogue process
to see how they are: where they stand– emotionally-following
the war, to see together whether their participation in the
process had an effect on their attitude towards the war and
towards the respective “other”, to discuss the cemetery progress
and again—to think What Next. More>
|
|
Read About our upcoming
workshops. |
| |
IIMHC
Senior Associate
Poonam Barua |
|
Poonam
Barua is Founder-Director of Public Affairs Management, an
independent firm specializing in corporate and institutional
diplomacy and global corporate advisory services, based in
New Delhi. She is also concurrently Regional Director - India,
The Conference Board, New York, and has been heading their
India operations for the past eight years. She is also Representative
for the Board's highly successful top-management forum on
"Human Resources Council -¬ India", and the
Board's "Council on Corporate Governance & Risk Management
(India).
As Regional Director of The Conference Board representing
the Fortune 500, Ms. Barua has been closely involved with
leading corporate debate and thought-leadership on the important
issues of corporate governance, enterprise risk management,
business ethics and transparency, global leadership development,
human resources strategies, and diversity enhancement -- with
corporate Board Directors, Chief Executive Officers, CFO’s
and Human Resource leaders of best performance companies and
foreign multinationals in the India region.
Ms. Barua is also closely associated with distinguished international
institutions – including the Eisenhower Fellowships, London
Business School, The Brookings Institution, Financial Markets
International Inc., and East-West Center -- as Special Representative
for their India programs. She was also awarded the Ford Fellowship
by the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies
(SAIS), Johns Hopkins University, for her work on conflict
resolution and promoting business cooperation in South Asia.
She is an Advisory Council Member at the Institute of Multi-Track
Diplomacy (Wash D.C.), Visiting Fellow at the Henry L. Stimson
Center (Wash D.C.), Governing Council Member of the Institute
of Learning and Management (India), and Board Director of
Walchand Captial Ltd. (Mumbai).
Ms. Barua is a trained economist with a Masters Degree from
the prestigious Delhi School of Economics, and has spent over
a decade as Chief Program Specialist with the United States
Information Service in New Delhi. During her free time she
gives lectures at the University of Maribor (Slovenia), Regional
Center for Strategic Studies (Colombo), and other think-tanks
worldwide, and is a Fellow at the Salzburg Seminar (Austria).
She joins IIMHC in the initiative to train the future business
leaders at prestigious schools of business around India, to
use their skills and position to stop and prevent the ethnic
violence that has weakened the world's largest democracy and
threatened its economic growth. |
We'd like to hear what you
think on this newsletter. Email
us with your thoughts. |
