Youth Leader Reflections on
Southern California University Tour
International Education Program
OneVoice's International Education Program brings our most seasoned and active youth leaders, trained in public speaking and conflict resolution to university campuses around the world to share their messages. During week-long
speaking tours, Youth Leaders address large audiences, meet with student and
community leaders, and exchange best practices in combating challenges that
arise from the conflict in their own communities. Here are two accounts from our youth leaders that just returned from Southern California:
Malaka Samara, age 29,
Tulkaram, Palestine
My experience,
My tour with OneVoice
to Southern California was a great stage in my life, and I’ve learned so much
from my experience there. There I felt
the taste of peace and freedom. I
learned that hundreds of American people from different religions, cultures and
languages support peace in the Middle East and support ending the conflict
between Palestine and Israel, to create conditions for peace and dignity.
In America, I realized that
the world is very big and wonderful. Everybody can feel this if he supports peace and believes that
we have the chance to achieve peace successfully and live as other human
beings. Also my experience with my Israeli
partner was great because I learned that most of them want to end conflict and
live in peace. At this point Palestinian
people and Israeli people must respect each other and do something important to
end the conflict.
About Malaka:
Malaka
Samara is a OneVoice Palestine youth leader from Tulkaram, a city in the north
of Palestine. She is 29 years old and
has a bachelor’s degree in English Language and Literature from AL-Najah
University-Nablus. She has worked as a substitute English teacher in many schools
in Tulkaram and refugee camps with UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine
Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) schools. She has also worked with the European Union as an interpreter during the
second Palestinian Legislative Council Elections. Malaka has participated in many international
camps with the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees and has been a
volunteer with many local institutions that target youth. Her hobbies
are reading, traveling and studying languages.
Malaka
first heard about OneVoice through a friend who is a member in the
organization. She likes OneVoice’s ideas about ending the conflict and
the role that youth can play in mobilizing the grassroots to achieve ending the
occupation and living in peace. She also hopes to dispel others’ misperceptions
of Palestinians through work with OneVoice. Her dream is to live in peace and to travel without
difficulties. She joined OneVoice to be
a key member, to achieve peace, and rise up with her people.
Shani Gershon, age 24, Jerusalem,
Israel
The true meaning of
the OneVoice North American outreach program was revealed to me during the
Southern Californian tour I participated in. As the conflict immediately affects those who live within the region, I
wasn’t sure why there was a need to speak to students on North American
campuses other than to portray our work in both OneVoice Israel and OneVoice
Palestine. The truth was that the conflict affects students on campuses, for
the different Jewish/Israeli and Muslim/Arab student groups, those who claim to
represent the people in the region, will sometimes not cooperate with each
other or even sit in the same room, and present a more extreme opinion than the
people that live in conflict. Therefore, it was important to ask those few
people from both “sides” on campus, to form some sort of dialogue, just to get
to know each other, not in order to agree upon things of the past, but to look
forward to the future. In this way they could represent the people who live in
the region and hopefully bring back a new perspective to their peers.
On a personal level, I had
an interesting experience for it was the first time I had spent time with a
Palestinian. Hearing Malaka’s personal story, discussing our beliefs, our
truths, disagreeing on many things but understanding that we both want the same
things in the future, gave me hope that a better future is not a dream but
something that can be attained. At times, in the difficult reality we live in,
I sometimes ask myself if the work I do in OneVoice Israel is making a
difference, and this experience reassured me that the work we do is important,
and motivated me to continue to work for a better future.
About Shani:
Shani Gershon is a
OneVoice Israel youth leader who was born and raised in Toronto, Canada, and
came to Israel at the age of 10, moving to Rehovot in central Israel. Shani is currently an International Relations
and Communications student and at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In addition to her studies, Shani volunteers
with Stand with Us, an Israeli advocacy organization, and was recently awarded
a Leadership, Communication, and Diplomacy fellowship. She is also a counselor for international
students at the Hebrew University and has organized a series of Israeli
cultural events for students studying abroad in Jerusalem.
Over the years,
Shani was concerned by some of her peers’ indifference to the conflict. Shani
understood that she could not be apathetic to such a burning subject, and
OneVoice provided her the perfect platform in order for her to become active.
OneVoice empowers the voice of the majority of the society that wants an end to
the conflict. Shani believes that people should have the power to shape their
future, and voicing the cry for an end to the conflict through non-violent
methods is a step in shaping the people’s future. Shani has been part of OneVoice for almost
two years. She is one of the founders and
currently the head of chapter of the Jerusalem Chapter of OneVoice at the Hebrew University, the first university-based OneVoice chapter.
