Woman Educators for Peace & Human Rights
Project Evaluation (January 2007)
By Nitzan Rotem
The Project incudes theoretical course and dynamic workshops along one academic semester. Participants are Arab and Jewish female students, learning for first degree in Behavioral Studies and Education in the Emeq Yizre'el Academic College.
Along the Project 3 cycles has been executed in the years 2005-2006. Fourth cycle is running this year's first semester and one more will run in the second semester. Each cycle includes 12 – 13 lectures and workshops with participation of 16 – 19 students.
The Project focuses on three issues: encounter of Jewish and Arab female students and development of dialogue between them, clarification of personal positions, through confrontation with complexity of their national and genderial identity and empowerment of the participants in these issues.
The Project is also unique in composition of inter-cultural dialogue, with its feminine aspects – within academic framework that combine theoretical – academic learning with experience of dynamic workshops.
Evaluation of the Project, that concernes to the various goals end unique characteristics is based on analysis of questionnaires distributed among all the participants and personal interviews with some of them, with two of the Project's facilitators, with Academic manager of the course with the Educational Director of "Friendship Village" and on analysis of the Project's facilitators' summaries.
The Evaluation will concern to the following factors:
1 – Promotion of the Project to genderial consciousness of participants
2 – Promotion of the Project to genderial empowerment of participants
3 - Promotion of the Project to coping with national characteristics (as relating to the Arab –
Jewish conflict)
4 - Promotion of the Project to conceiving the connection between these coponents
5 - Promotion of the Project to connection between the academic lectures (cognitive) and the
emotional impact of the workshops as components of the Project.
1 – Promotion of the Project to genderial consciousness of participants
A - Considering the genderial aspects, Arab female students got considerably more out of the Project than the Jewish ones. Most of them met the first time feminist theories and had an opportunity to consider their own feminine identity. In spite of this, most Arab students refused to identify with feminist contents of the course. They also refused to make comparison between their oppression as women and oppression as Arabs: they also refused to make any comparision between their experience as Arab women and the experiences of Jewish women.
B – Jewish students also had benefits from genderial aspects, but less meaningful than the Arabs. However, most of them refused to accept to be defined as oppressed section in the society.
C – Significantly the feminist aspect was secondary part of the course. Most participants – Jews as well as Arabs – are unfamiliar with 3 - Promotion of the Project to coping with national characteristics (as relating to the Arab – Jewish conflict)oncepts, such as "the personal is political". This aspect is considerable, as most lectures were devoted to genderial issues. Our conclusion is, that main impact of the course on participants was given by the workshops, rather than by lectures.
D – Many participants announced the positive atnosphere that was created by exclusive feminine presence in the Project ( this atmosphere had a complex influence on the course)
E – A small minority of participants (Arabs and Jews) announced absence of males as disadvantage.
2 - Promotion of the Project to genderial empowerment of participants
The element of empowerment in the Course has two aspects: encouraging independent thinking and giving a voice to the participants.
Encouraging independent thinking can be recognized through high values given by the participants to items in the questionnair, such as clarification of personal positions, that means – elaboration of thoughts, ideas and emotions toward issues raised along tho course.
Giving voice to the participants was expressed above all concerning the Arab students: in all other academic courses Arab female students are mostly rather passive. Even in bi-national encounters Arab women are quite rearly speak, in presence of males. Unlike in all other occasion, in this course tha Arab woman students used the opportunity given to them, in order to express their positions, thoughts and needs. Many of them announced positively this chance to share their thoughts with others and to express their frustrations.
3 - Promotion of the Project to coping with national characteristics (as relating to the Arab –
Jewish conflict)
A – Promotion of the course to National dimension was emphasised mush more by the participants, than to its gender dimension. In the "open question" given in the questionnairs, mostly this dimension was mentioned.
B – The two main goals of the Course organizars has been achieved: 1 – it promoted very much to rejection of prejudices on both sides, that is that first step vas made in recognizing and understanding the "other". The participants emphasised this point in questionnairs, as well as in personal interviews.
2 – it promoted very much to clarifying personal positions of participants.
C – All participants – with one exception – will warmly recommend to friends, to participate in this course.
D – To most Jewish students ( 72% ) this was the first opportunity to encounter Arab students. 25% of them experienced encounters with Arab women before.
E – Both Jewish and Arab students announced positively the using of Arabic language in the workshops and the presence of facilitators from both national groups.
F – Particpants asked for informal meetings outside the Academic institute and for continuing encounters.
G – Some participants mentioned existence of another course in the College that gave opportunity to discuss over the Jewish – Arab conflict, but from the angle of suffering ( Holocaust and Naqba).
H – Significantly the participants didn't mention the aspect of academic learning, as important element of the course.
I - Arab students complained about missing of sincerity (from both sides) when talking about personal experiences. Some explanations can be given to this: negative experience of Arab students with their Jewish partners in other courses, the fact that students were motivated to join this course by needs of study – instead of "personal interest", lack of self-confidence of the Arab students ( feeling of inequality), apprehension from influence of speaking openly – on their grades.
J – The Arab students complained about the temporary impact of the encounter ("when it finishes, everybody goes home, as if there were no meetings and discussions…").
K – Has to be mentioned the influence of the course on the need of Jewish participants to cope with the component of responsibility ("sometimes it was hard to listen to their feelings. I wanted to shout: We didn't mean!").
L – Some of the participants came up with a sense of despair: Jewish students: "Unfortunately I understood, that this long conflict is very sincere, prejudices of the two sides on each other are deeply rooted, this will be very hard to change – that means that solution is not seen on the horizon". "Regarding thedifferences, the conflict will be very hard to solve". Arab student: "I came to conclusion, that the Jews will not understand us even after 100 years. I don't see any solution with them".
These frustrations have to be treated in summing up workshops.
M – Lack of equality feeling in the encounter.
Dominance of the Jewish partner was expressed by amount of speeking in the encounters. In the workshops it was felt on less extent, in the formal lessions the Arab students hardly spoke. As a result of lack of equality, the Arab – Palestinian prespective was expressed on less extent along the course.
Worthy to note, that Arab students suggested to run a part of the course.
While in the workshops the two facilitators represented the two participating national groups, the chief lecturer in the class was Jewish, therefore the lectures were hold exclusively in Hebrew. It also expressed mostly Jewish way of mind, in spite of considerable effort made by the lecturer to express different prespectives of the subjects in discussion. The Jewish lecturer also gave grades to the participants. We have to mention, that in this course the first time Arab students were allowed to give exemes in Arabic language. The few Arab lecturers who were invited to the course didn't have the authority of local lecturer, therefore it was easy to Jewish students to attack them, instead of arguing with their positions.
It is recommended, that the lectures should be given by Jewish and Arab lecturers – 50:50.
N – cross-national interaction: along the course primal barriers were crossed. Students from the two national groups started to be friends, to exchange minds – something that never before happened. However this positive interaction didn't continue after finishing the course.
O – Deep going impact of the course:
1 – Participants were encouraged to open themselves to political issues and interest in Jewish-Arab relationships.
2 – Students told to the staff, that they shared their experiences in the encounter with friends and family members. Family members witnessed that they were impressed by positive impact of the course on participants.
3 – Some students told about attempts to meet – outside the academic framework – during the July – September 2006 Lebanon war.
4a- Promotion of the Project to conceiving the connection between these coponents
Couldn't be recognized any impact on connections between the course's two components.
Most participants didn't succeed to contain the complexity of mutual influence of the course's two components. Only one of them reflected the Arab voice to the Jewish –Oriental voice in versus the Western Jewish hegemony. As told above, the Arab students refused to make comparison between their oppression as women and oppression as Arabs: they also refused to make any comparision between their experience as Arab women and the experiences of Jewish women and the Jewish students refused to be defined as oppressed section in the society.
4b – Promotion of composing the two components to the goals of the course
1 – Presence of only women in the course created a calm and easy atmosphere, however it had a complex double effect, concerning the national aspect: on one hand it made more easy for the participants to open and to express themselves freely, but on the other hand it made very difficult to come up with hard contents of the conflict that could threaten the women solidarity. In addition to this, the woman solidarity was not turned to political empowerment of the group.
2 – Still the only women environment promoted to empowerment of the participants – especially the Arab ones.
3 – Including two components in the course created competition on attention of the participants. This factor influenced negatively the group process in the workshops. Emphasising the feminine aspects also made possible to slip out from serious discussion about the Conflict – on the other hand focusing on the Conflict made possible to prevent real discussion on genderial power relationships.
It is recommended to clarify the role of each component as related to goals of the course. If the feminine component is conceived as merely means in development of Jewish-Arab dialogue it has to be given the proper status as such, instead of managing a whole workshop focusing on it.
5 - Promotion of the Project to connection between the academic lectures (cognitive) and the
emotional impact of the workshops as components of the Project.
Lectures included in the course included three fields: creation of identity, gender theories and specific, feminine ways of coping with conflicts. Actually the only times the Jewish-Arab conflict was mentioned it was in a few guest lectures. No theoretical material was given on this field. Unlike in most academic lessons, in this course open discussions that took in consideration responses of the participants, were prefered over frontal lectures.
Content of workshops can be divided to two groups: group creation processes focusing on recognizing the Conflict – and workshops coping with contents of previous academic lessons.
In spite of this, most participants emphasised the existence of gap between learned material in lessons and the workshops. This feeling was created possibly because the workshops were focusing mostly on the Conflict, in most lectures and lessons in the class this issue was not mentioned. However it is in opposition to the goals of the organizers who found an advantage in composing the academic lectures (cognitive aspects) and dynamic workshops (emotional aspects) in purpose to give the participants means to reflect the theoretical material learned in the class, on reality of the Israeli society. Maybe part of the failure is rooted in resistence of part of the students, however it will make sense to exemine more ways to integrate on better way the cognitive and the emotional components of the course.
As the lectures and discussion about gender issues were conceived as rather neglectible by the participants, our recommendation is to devote greater part of the learning to historical, sociological and cultural aspects of the Arab – Jewish conflict. In addition to this we believe, that giving priority to discussions over lectures in theoretical learning has to be re-examined from aspect of efficiency in academic learning as well as in dynamic process of the group. The reason if this question is the clear dominancy of Jewis students in academic discussions – as opposite to reality in the workshops. Perhaps giving priority to frontal lectures in the academic learning will be more effective in acquiring theoretical knowledge.
To our opinion focusing on the Arab – Jewis conflict along several successive workshops will be more beneficial than intertwining it all along the course with gender issues.
Beside the critical answers given by the participants about specific issues in the Course, all of them emphasised the uniqueness of this course in its contents as well as its attitude, the emotional experiences they went through, the impact of this course on their personality and opinions (as comparing with other courses in the Institute), its importance from academic aspect and their strong will to meet similar experience also in other courses.
