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Re-igniting Play for Peace in the Middle East

"These youth are smart, really smart." - Play for Peace Co-Founder Craig Dobkin

  We're continuing our look back at some of our archived blog stories, in anticipation of new stories we have coming very soon. Today's post takes us back to the Middle East, with another post by our Executive Director Sarah Gough, while she and Play for Peace Co-Founder Craig Dobkin conducted their 10-day training tour in the region during 2014. This story is about a training in the Palestinian Christian city of Eilaboun that brought youth leaders and adults together for four hours of Play for Peace games. Enjoy our look back, and we'll bring you new stories from the Middle East soon!

Day 1: In Eilaboun, Everyone Is Invited and Everybody Wins!

By Sarah Gough

Eilaboun is a small Arab village in Galilee with 5000 inhabitants who are approximately 65% Christian and 35% Muslim. It is also the hometown to our Trainer Samer Mouallem. Unfortunately, like in many areas in the region, community relations are tense, the school climate has deteriorated and any personal dispute can easily evolve into a violent collective clash.  As a peripheral village there are not many recreational programs and none that are joint programs with surrounding villages.

Led by Craig and Samer, this four-hour workshop included eight youth leaders, mixed men and women from different neighborhoods. Craig loved working with them saying; "these youth are smart, really smart." For Samer, it was a re-energizing experience now that he knows he has the support of his hometown youth in building Play for Peace in the region.  We hope a new Play for Peace Club will be formed here. I was sad to have missed this workshop as I had not yet arrived, but the last day of our visit we ran into one of the youth that participated in the workshop and his form of greeting was to point to Craig and say our motto, "Everyone is invited and everybody wins!" It sounds like we got our message across!

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