Facilitator Training Course (2009) Opens

May 14-15, 2009 marked the beginning of a new School for Peace Conflict Group Facilitation Training Course, with 22 participants. The first phase of the course includes 10 weekly sessions taking place Thursday evenings and Friday mornings, until the end of July. The second phase will continue in late 2009 with guided observation of youth encounters, facilitated by two senior facilitators.

Numbering 22 adults (9 Palestinians and 13 Jews), this is the largest Facilitator Training Course ever conducted by the SFP. Participants were selected from 30 excellent candidates. It simply was not possible to include more, so some candidates were invited to re-apply for next year’s course.

Many of the Course participants are already involved in Arab-Jewish encounter activities, and some are employed by NGOs working in the field. Their motivation is to acquire new knowledge and professional skills. SFP staff Ahmad Hijazi and Nava Sonnenschein are facilitating the first 4 sessions. Subsequent sessions will introduce lecturers and trainers from a range of different fields, in order to provide the participants with multiple perspectives on inter-group relations.

The School for Peace (SFP) has conducted over 25 facilitator training courses, with some 400 trainees in Israel and Palestine. A further 6 courses have been held internationally, most of these in conflict zones.

The objective of these courses is to create a cadre of proficient facilitators in the domain of Arab-Jewish relations (or any other inter-group conflict). Training integrates first-hand experience in conflict group encounter, process analysis, gleanings from group theory, peer-facilitation and guided observation of youth encounter sessions with veteran facilitators. The SFP has long been recognized as a leader in conflict group facilitation, and interest in the Training Course is growing from year to year.