Facing and Fighting Discrimination in our society: Identifying discrimination in our own backyards and fighting back through dialogue! 2016-2017

Check out our video of our Arab-Jewish-German youth exchange in Rahat!

The concept of the project is a youth exchange involving youth from Israel and Germany. Israeli Bedouin, Jewish Israeli, and German youth participate in dialogue, group exercises, and field trips to historical sites (including Holocaust memorials) in Germany. The German youth also visit Israel to explore questions and arising problems of racism and discrimination in Israel today. Through communication and bonding, we strive to bring awareness to daily racism and develop ideas and strategies to fight against it. It is our goal to provide these youth with a practical framework and a creative outlet through which to understand the complixeties of identity and become active participants in the global conversation of fighting discrimination and racism today. We would like to thank our sponsors EVZ – (Europeans for Peace) and FAB – (Friends Without Borders).

"Self-perception and perception of others" – Bedouins and Sinti as a stereotyped minority in past and present. June - July 2015

A Short Film Of The Program

Program Gallery

As a joined collaboration of European For Peace, EVZ, House Of Wannsee Conference and The New Dawn In The Negev, two groups, 12 students each from diffrent places and cultures, come together for two special encounters that took place at Rahat and Berlin.

The project was based around understanding discrimination in the context of the past and the present and create students advocates against it. The students lived together, traveled together and got to know one another on a deeper level while exploring the other’s culture and historical context.

The main goal of the project was to bring Bedouin Youth from the Negev of Israel, one of the most discrimniated against groups in Israeli society, together with young Germans to explore the mechanisms of stereotypes towards minorities in the past and present. In order to have a dual sided perspective on the question of discrimination, one group belongs to the discriminated minority while the other group belongs to the major society. The project was dealling with questions of discrimination of different groups, with an emphasis on the Sintis and Bedouins, and the complexities and similiarities that exist in both Israel and Germany.

Links: Exchange Vision web page

"Reframe and Remember" Youth Exchange

On the 23rd of August, five Bedouin and five Jewish students left Ben Gurion airport bound for Magdeburg, Germany. For some of the students in the group, this was their first trip outside of their home country. This began a week-long program built as a collaboration between A New Dawn and Internationaler Jugendaustausch (IJGD) . The ten Israeli students and ten German students worked towards a photography exhibit to be held at the end of the week.

Exploring Storytelling through Photography

The exchange struck a balance between learning practical photographic techniques and exploring a variety of topics surrounding the unique relationship between Germany and Israel, the history of the Holocaust and minorities in Europe. Students enjoyed in excursions into the countryside, participated in a photography scavenger hunt and took a day trip into Berlin to visit memorials and museums dedicated to Jewish, Roma and Sinti minorities persecuted during the Holocaust. The discussions emerging from these experiences reinforced the unique beauty of collecting such a diverse group of students together and giving them a safe space in which to explore these complex, difficult and deeply personal issues. The relationships emerging from the exchange give us a great deal of excitement as we look toward the future.

Excited for the Future

This program was designed as a two-part exchange with the German students slated to visit Israel in the spring of 2014. We are excited by the success of the exchange on August and are working hard to work out the logistic and financial details of bringing this group together again next year.