HAIFA: The third Israel peace camp, titled ‘HWPL’s Peace School Beyond Borders: United in Peace’, will be held on May 17 at the Mar Elias School in Haifa, Israel, bringing together Jewish and Arab students.
HWPL (Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light), an international peace NGO and the co-host of the camp, has been promoting peace education as one of its core initiative to legislate peace and make it sustainable. Another host of the event, Mar Elias School was first appointed as HWPL peace school and continued its cooperation with HWPL ever since. The chair of Mar Elias, H.E. Elias Charcour has been playing leading role in this intimate affiliation contributing as one of the key speakers in WARP (World Alliance of Religious Peace) office meeting of HWPL.
Under the theme of ‘The Right Way to Resolve Conflicts’, this camp aims to teach students with different cultural and religious backgrounds how to communicate, understand, and cooperate to create a world with coexistence. The goal’s value means deeper to participants as the situation they go through is of a fragile and unstable conflict.
The peace camp is expected to play a significant role in promoting mutual understanding and respect between Jewish and Arab students, and in fostering joint efforts to create a peaceful society. It is also anticipated that the camp will help students enhance their conflict resolution skills and cultivate the qualities of peace citizens.
The first activity of the camp will be for students to create pickets with the theme ‘How to Resolve Conflicts: Mutual Respect, Communication, Understanding, and Cooperation’. The activity requires communal interaction to make one visible result with collective help.
Students will ‘peace walk’ around the school with their self-made pickets. Students and local residents participating in the peace walk will deliver peace messages to create a peaceful society with a concert featuring various performances that sing of peace and harmony following.
The event is planned by HWPL Peace Education Department alongside providing Mar Elias a guidance to peace education training for teachers. The two organisations plan to explore wider training lessons for both teachers and students through the upcoming peace camp on May 17.
