The comings and goings of September 2009
October 10, 2009
Seasons change as summer gets slowly but surely edged out by autumn. Green, brown and orange leaves are beginning to fall from the trees and create natural carpets on the ground. A month of holidays for both Jews and Muslims – a month of reflection, family orientated celebrations and renewed energy for the coming year.
The tall, elegant and graceful white Hatzavim (squills) popping up all over the country are Mother Nature's messengers of seasonal change – out with the old, and in with the new – hopefully heralding a more peaceful and prosperous one than the last.
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Groups from Bundeszentrale (German Federal Agency for Civic Education) are frequent visitors to Givat Haviva. The groups usually consist of teachers, social workers and media folk. The September group, accompanied by Bundeszentrale's Waltraud Arenz, Head of Division in Bonn and Israeli tour guide Roni Winter, were actually somewhat different in as much as all were involved in youth work.
Tackling the complicated and sensitive issues of Jewish-Arab relations just a few days after arriving in the country was no mean task for the mostly twenty and thirty-something's. They showed a great deal of interest in the talks and tour of Wadi Ara. Hopefully we will see some of them again on future visits to Israel and Givat Haviva with groups of youth from Germany.
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Kibbutz Hazorea has been a temporary home to volunteers from all over the world since the 1960s. For the last twenty years many of those volunteers have participated in seminars organized by the International Department.
The volunteers working at Hazorea hail from many different countries with diverse cultural, political and linguistic backgrounds, but share a great deal in common – their youth, sense of adventure and curiosity to learn about another way of life and country.
Racheli Sharon, Volunteer Coordinator of Hazorea, said that the seminars are an important aspect of the learning experience of her volunteers and hoped to continue to work in close cooperation with Givat Haviva.
"The volunteers learn a great deal from the lectures and tours and hopefully understand better how complicated everything is after hearing about, and seeing for themselves, the facts on the ground".
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"Dialogue" is an organization in Israel catering to the educational needs of groups of German volunteers in Israel. In the main the young people are taking a gap year or volunteering in Israel under a scheme in Germany that releases them from army service. They work in institutions for the mentally and physically handicapped, and in residential homes where many of the residents are German speaking, some of whom are Holocaust survivors.
A group of twenty or so young people presently volunteering around Israel was brought to Givat Haviva by Dialogue staff in order to hear about the various coexistence projects run on and off campus. After some background information on Givat Haviva and the surrounding Wadi Ara region, the group met with Riad Kabaha, the co-director of the Givat Haviva Jewish-Arab Center for Peace.
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A representative of the International Department attended a meeting of volunteer leaders from kibbutzim held at the Kibbutz H'Artzi Federation of Kibbutzim offices in Tel Aviv.
During the event, the importance of the volunteer seminars organized by Givat Haviva's International Department was emphasized by the volunteer leaders from Katura, Baram, Hazorea and Geva – and hopefully we will see a return to the volunteer seminar to be held on campus as it was in the past.