MISSION
Salaam Shalom Educational Foundation promotes innovative educational methods and conflict resolution training aimed at nurturing the minds and souls of Jewish and Arab children living under chronic stress of regional conflict.

STRATEGY
We are building bridges between Jewish and Arab children by sponsoring healing educational methods that address their academic, physiological and psychological needs, so that together these children may develop new capacities for problem solving and new potentials for cooperation.

GOALS
We seek to foster a generation of individuals educated to cultivate new social, cultural and economic endeavors so that communities of Israelis and Palestinians may learn to thrive together.

WHAT WE DO
Salaam Shalom Educational Foundation supports Arab and Jewish children in learning how to build a mutually peaceful and productive society.  This is accomplished through their participation in the healing and humanistic Waldorf educational method and Conflict Resolution Training.

A NEW GENERATION OF COMPASSIONATE YOUTH VOLUNTEERS
Last year an astounding 58% of graduates from Harduf Waldorf High School (approximately 40 students) signed up to perform an extra year of volunteer community service (“Shnat Sherut”) to work with Jewish and Arab individuals who are homeless, drug addicted, or orphaned in comparison with 2% of Jewish high school graduates.  Waldorf school graduates from Israel testify that the values they received in school had a major influence on their decision to do volunteer service in the community. 

WALDORF: A GLOBAL HUMANISTIC EDUCATIONAL MOVEMENT PROMOTING COEXISTENCE
The Waldorf educational method is used in classrooms around the world from London to Nepal and from Los Angeles to Tel-Aviv.  There are almost one thousand Waldorf schools in 83 countries around the world.  A Waldorf training college in Cape Town, South Africa was described by UNESCO as an organization “which prepared the way and laid the foundations for a new and integrated [community]”. In Israel the number of schools using Waldorf educational techniques has been steadily increasing in Jewish communities since 1989 when the first school started with 13 children.  Today there are more than 4,000 children in 16 Waldorf schools throughout Israel.  Additionally there over 100 kindergartens using these methods and three Waldorf high schools opened in Israel the 2009/2010 year.  The student growth rate is over ten percent per year. 

The advantage of adopting a Waldorf educational approach to bridge Jewish and Arab, Israeli and Palestinian communities includes:
a pluralistic and holistic outlook highlighting our common humanity
the study of multiple languages
an emphasis on the universal elements of nature, seasons, art and music
parent education stressing nonviolence and self-responsibility
 
HELPING CHILDREN LIVING UNDER THE CHRONIC STRESS OF CONFLICT
In 2003, 42% of all children in Israel suffered post-traumatic stress disorder, the same syndrome seen in soldiers returning from war.  Waldorf education, developed after World War I as an effort to heal traumatized children in Europe, is a holistically oriented education that integrates the relaxation response into the class curriculum to help children de-stress while they learn in a cooperative rather than competitive environment.

CO-SPONSOR OF TWO PEACE EDUCATION PILOT SCHOOLS:
Ein Bustan, Spring in the Garden, is the first integrated Jewish/Arab Waldorf kindergarten in Israel.  It is situated in the Arab village of Hilf, near Kiryat Tivon, in the lower Galilee. Ein Bustan operates two kindergartens/schools: a preschool for the youngest children, ages 2-4, and a kindergarten for the older children, ages 4-7.The children of “Ein Bustan” (meaning “spring in the garden”) come from Kiryat Tivon, (a Jewish town) and the surrounding Bedouin (Arab) villages Hilf, Zbidat, Zarzir and Bosmat Tab’un

El Zeitoun, The Olive Tree, is the first all-Arab Waldorf School in Israel.  It was established in 2004 by a group of parents and entrepreneurs, both Arab and Jewish.  It is located in the lower Galilee in Shfar’am, a Arab town in Israel of over 30,000 inhabitants of mixed Arab population: Muslims (about 50%), Christians (about 35%) and Druze (about 15%).  El Zeitoun began as one kindergarten and today it consists of two kindergartens and elementary grades one through three, with an enrollment  of over 100 students. It is the only educational enterprise (school) in the city that includes Muslim, Christian and Druze in the same educational environment. The children celebrate the holidays of the three religions, and live their customs and ceremonies on an everyday basis. The children’s parents meet each other, and create a lively, warm community that is stronger than the religious differences.

El Zeitoun, this Arab Waldorf School in Israel, provides a model for Palestinians in the West Bank on how Waldorf education can be integrated into an Arab culture based on Muslim values.  Because of the numerous Waldorf schools in the Jewish communities in Israel and the education’s emphasis on universal human values, Israeli and Palestinian educational communities involved in the Waldorf approach can find a common ground for joint cooperation as they strive together to educate their students.

El Zeitoun is developing a Friendship Bridge Program with the nearby Jewish Waldorf school, Harduf.  By sharing cultural events and day trips, these schools help develop intercultural connections, including shared values with a focus on conflict resolution.

ISRAELI AND PALESTINIAN EDUCATORS WORKING TOGETHER FOR A NEW FUTURE:
In phase II of Salaam Shalom’s Training program, Waldorf teachers Stafanie Allon and Amina Sawaed travel weekly from Israel into the West Bank to mentor Palestinian kindergarten teachers at the Jenin Charitable Society. The Palestinian teachers learn how to create a warm and nurturing classroom and how, through stories and other activities, they can teach respect for all human beings. There are 6 kindergarten classes at the Jenin Charitable Society, with about 25 children in each, who are benefiting from this training.  Stefanie Allon started the first Waldorf kindergarten in Israel in 1989.  She also helped start the Arab Waldorf Teacher Training and El Zeitoun.  Amina Sawaed is the daughter of the respected Bedouin sheik, Abu Amin, a leader of over 40,000 Bedouins in the Galilee.  Amina Sawaed is a teacher in the El Zeitoun Waldorf kindergarten in the Galilee.

AFFILIATES
Salaam Shalom Educational Foundation is a member of Alliance for Middle East Peace (ALLMEP), a coalition of over 60 organizations and the United Religions Initiative (URI), a coalition of grassroots interfaith organizations from over 70 countries around the globe. The two schools with co-sponsor in Israel,  Ein Bustan and El Zeitoun, are affiliated with the Inter Agency Task Force on Israeli Arab Issues.

PAST ACTIVITIES
Salaam Shalom Educational Foundation’s first phase included conflict resolution training for faculty and teens in Israel, support for our Palestinian Teacher Training, and support for a high school peace leadership program in the Galilee. The high school program was a two-pronged educational model promoting Jewish and Arab coexistent participation in Israeli society while addressing the high drop out rate and low performance for matriculation of Israeli-Arab high school students from a public high school.

Though the high school program in itself was successful, we made two critical observations. One observation was that we saw that the educational gap between Jewish and Arab high school students was too large to try to effectively remediate at such a late stage of development.  From this observation we decided it was far more productive to support an equal education for both Jewish and Arab students from the earliest years.  We also observed how important it was for the Jewish and Arab communities to share a common goal in which they could work together to achieve. 

Because of the unprecedented growth of Waldorf education in the Jewish community and the nacscent development of this humanistic education within the Arab community, it was decided that the most effective intervention for equal opportunities in education in Israel while promoting the long term development of a culture of peace in the region, was to support two pilot education programs, Ein Bustan, the first Arab/Waldorf kindergarten in Israel and El Zeitoun, the first Arab Waldorf School in Israel.  Both of these programs, along with our Palestinian Teacher Training have a high potential for positively impacting society in the Middle East.  Today we support an education for both Jewish and Arab children in the Middle East that heals while promoting new capacities toward building a peaceful and prosperous future.