Yet another coexistence effort worth supporting is the Galilee Encounter Community – an interfaith exchange project that brings together students, educators and parents from Israeli schools in the Jewish town of Karmiel and the Arab village of Majd el-Krum.

This group started as a result of the deterioration of the relations between the two neighboring communities after the Second Intifada in 2000. The principals of the two main schools in the two towns decided to act in order to restore good relations. They started by facilitating meetings between a core group of ten teachers from each of the schools, and subsequently included the children, instituting joint study, visits to each other’s homes and places of worship, and eventually to larger-scale events. Parents were also drawn into the project and today the group includes approximately 800 children and 200 adults in its activities.

The Galilee Encounter Community is a project of the Interfaith Encounter Association, a wonderful organization that seeks to promote coexistence in the Middle East through cross-cultural study and inter-religious dialogue. Click on the clip above for a great documentary on the Galilee project and here if you’d like to contribute to their effort.