Seeds explore critical issues through Community Dialogues in Haifa, Nazareth
JERUSALEM | As part of an ongoing series of Community Dialogues, in which Seeds identify, design, and implement programs based on what they perceive as the most important conflict-related issues facing their communities internally, 27 Israeli Seeds and friends visited Nazareth in early January for a day of learning and engagement.
The participants spent their time in the majority-Arab city engaging in critical conversation, exploration, and understanding of the different populations living within Israel. The participants heard directly from Nazareth youth and visited locations across the town.
Rasha, a Nazareth native and Seed, organized the “Life of Palestinians in Israel” Community Dialogue in order to provide her peers with the unique and rare opportunity to explore these questions and to reflect on culture and religion within the national context.
Earlier in December, Israeli Seeds met with representatives from different youth movements in Haifa, a city famous for its heterogenous population, for a Community Dialogue called “Living Together.”
The goals of the Haifa Community Dialogue were threefold: to create an understanding of what it means to ‘live together’ in a city of diverse populations, to discuss the benefits and challenges of a mixed city, and to build relationships between Seeds and the youth in Haifa through joint activities and dialogue.
Thoughtful and honest dialogue allowed Seeds to hear from the youth of Haifa directly, exposing them to under-addressed daily-life issues, and allowing them to dive into sensitive but critical conversation on what it really means to live together, especially as Arabs and Jews, in a region where the opposite is the norm.