JERUSALEM | For a few years, Seeds of Peace has been developing a program for Peer Leaders (PLs) here in the region. Their position is similar to the Peer Supports who return to Camp for a second summer to help guide the younger Seeds and participate in advanced leadership training. Instead of working with the new Seeds at Camp, the PLs work in the region to support Seeds after they return home.
Today we had a chance to devote a day entirely to our 2010 Palestinian and Israeli PLs. We brought together a group of extraordinary Seeds from all over Israel and the West Bank for a leadership retreat in the hills outside Abu Ghosh.
The day was focused on evaluating different types of leadership. We started off by hiking down to a beautiful spring, but with a twist. We split into three groups that each made its way down the hill under a different style of leadership: one group was led as a dictatorship, one group was run as a complete democracy where every tiny decision was put to a group vote, and the last was run with no formal leadership at all. When the last group made it down to the spring (finally) we had a great conversation about the effectiveness and appropriateness of each of these styles.
For the rest of the afternoon, we ran several other group initiatives, and had some very insightful discussions about how they could become stronger leaders within Seeds of Peace and within their communities. We also worked on developing skills that they can use to facilitate group discussions and activities.
We will be calling on the PLs to use these skills to help us run events throughout the rest of the summer. We were incredibly impressed by this group, and we can’t wait to work with them again at out Special Activity launch event this Sunday!