Tal Harris speaking to a new class of Youth Leadership Program attendees.
New York, December 1, 2010–A new school year has begun in Israel and with it came a whole new class of OneVoice Israel (OVI) Youth Leadership Program (YLP) fellows. OVI held its inaugural YLP seminar at the Marina Hotel in Tel Aviv, on Friday and Saturday.
OVI has embarked on a prestigious fellowship program that trains highly qualified candidates committed to ending the conflict through a two-state solution. The purpose of the orientation was to get the new fellows acclimated with the rest of the OneVoice family. Fellows receive extensive training throughout the year with the purpose of becoming OVI’s future leaders.
“The seminar was a success, and the fellows walked away with a good base of knowledge, as well as a desire to learn more. We were very pleased with the high caliber of the new fellows and were very excited by the level of initiative demonstrated by the chapters,” said Dana Sender, head of the Youth Leadership Program.
There were 40 students from seven chapters, including the Interdisciplinary Center of Herzliya (IDC),University of Haifa, Ben-Gurion University, Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University, Sapir College, and Oranim College, who participated in a weekend of learning and an introduction to the core issues of the conflict.
The Imagine 2018 campaign was presented to everyone at the seminar. As a part of their training, the fellows were organized into groups by their alma maters and were asked to consider their own visions, where they see themselves, how they imagine their lives in 2018.
Imagine 2018 is OneVoice’s multiplatform campaign that depicts visions by Israelis and Palestinians of 2018 if a peace agreement is signed versus maintaining the status quo or worse.
Click here to share a vision of your own!
Later, the groups were asked to consider what role the conflict could play in these visions. They wrote down their answers on a piece of paper and cut them into the shape of people, which they then presented to the group and placed onto a board, creating the OneVoice symbol out of their visions.
Dana Sender, and Danny Shaket, former OVI representative on the IEP tour, posing with the group's artistically aligned visions.
Special guests Shlomo Brom from the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), and Head of the Two-States Causus and State Control Committee MK Yoel Hasson both spoke at the seminar. Brom delivered an interesting speech on the current political climate with respect to the conflict. Hasson spoke to the fellows about his lobby and its current status in the Knesset.
On the second day, OVP Imagine 2018 Coordinator Antwan Saca, came to speak about activities, such as the OVP murals project, that were happening in the occupied Palestinian territories. The OVI members were extremely interested in what Antwan had to say, and asked a plethora of questions about OVP's activists. It was clear that they greatly appreciated the opportunity to communicate with a member from the greater OneVoice family.
Both OneVoice Israel and OneVoice Palestine are autonomously run, nationalistic offices that aim to represent and mobilise the moderate majority voice in their own society for a two-state solution.
Peace signs are a warm welcome to the OVI family!
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