July21-22/2010, Holy Land Trust partnered with the Palestinian Working Women Society for Development for two days in order to train graduates, professionals, and house wives in conflict resolution and non-violence.

PWWSD brought in 16 women to receive intensive training which was conducted by HLT’s trainers Lubna Bandak and Rana Al-Arja. The participants were from the Bethlehem District. The women varied in age, ranging from young 24 year olds to 50 years old. The training included conflict analysis, methodologies of assessing conflict and dealing with it, and creating common ground for peace building.

During the program many questions were asked to the group members such as: What is violence? How do we reach violent stages? And what are different kinds of violence? Along with these types of questions provocative sentences were given to the group each with a scenario where they had to decide if the sentence was an act of violence or not. This sparked a major discussion amongst the group members. Through the discussion people were able to debate and fully express their feelings. The leaders were able to raise awareness about why people think the way they do and how their attitudes could be improved. 5 principles of peace building were taught during the session to aid the group. The 5 principles are 1. Notice hurt 2. Praise people 3. Put-down-give-up 4. Right-wrongs 5. How to seek advice from others.

The group not only learned a lot about how they could help others, but also how they could help themselves and applies that knowledge to everyday experiences. Evaluations were given at the end and everyone gave the program high scores. The session was a great success and the group requested for two more days of training.