Transforming the Present, Shaping the Future
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“It has really made me think about myself, my life, my future, and what I want to do to help in the fight for human rights.”
- Palestinian student
“As challenging as this was, I was forced to look at issues within myself and the greater conflict that I would have never dealt with in another setting... these are the very issues that needed to be dealt with.”
- Jewish student
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COURSE CURRICULUM
I. Summer Educational Trip: For four weeks in June and July participants travel in the Balkans, engaging in a experiential educational trip in Serbia, Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and Montenegro. During this summer portion of the program, students participate in three distinct activities:
(1) Presentations: meeting members of the various Balkan communities, including academics, political activists, and members of civil society. View the lists of presentations from 2006 and 2007.
(2) Workshops: examining various themes in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. View the lists of workshops from 2006 and 2007.
(3) Group-dynamics Sessions: experiencing a group-process, participants engage in facilitated daily sessions where they reflect on their backgrounds, socialization processes, and systems of knowledge production.
Integral to the summer educational experience is our course reader, a reading packet comprised of two sections of scholarly articles: (a) introduction to the fall of Yugoslavia and an analysis of the Balkan conflicts and (b) articles relevant to comparative conflict analysis and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, used as the basis for our workshops. We distribute the reader prior to the summer program as participants are expected to arrive in the Balkans having already read the materials. View the table of contents of the readers from the 2006 through 2008 Summer Vision Programs.
Selected readings now available for the 2008 Vision Summer Program:
2008 Course Reading - Introduction to the Balkans Conflicts
2008 Course Reading - The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
II. Fall and Spring Retreats: During the academic year that follows the summer experience, students participate in fall and spring weekend retreats, designed to continue the work that began while in the Balkans. The fall retreat primarily focuses on discussions about individual and group reflections on participants’ community and campus lives, particularly as they relate to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, whereas the spring retreat continues some of the group discussions from the fall retreat with the added facet of having workshops on topics determined by the student participants.
III. Student Presentations: During the same academic year as the retreats, students organize and participate in campus and community presentations. During the fall, participants present their reflections and analyses on their university campuses. In the spring, participants lead home community presentations within community institutions such as cultural centers, religious institutions, and community forums. The goal of these two presentations is for students to articulate their gained experiences, knowledge, and understandings as a reflection of their participation in the summer component of the Vision Program. View the most recent list of student presentations.
IV. Writing Assignments: As part of the process of reflecting on individual and group experiences, students engage in focused writing exercises, exploring the variety of experiences, thoughts, and emotions that the participants are having throughout the proces. Some of these writing assignments are published on our Vision Program weblog. Click here for our Vision Program weblogs.
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© Copyright Abraham`s Vision 2005-2008 |
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Curriculum 