On March 3rd 2014 the second semester of the SFP-BGU course began.

This is the second year of SFP’s new course at BGU in partnership with Dr Tal Eyal, who is a graduate of the SFP course at Tel Aviv University and now part of the academic staff at BGU’s Social Psychology Department. The course has been a success, with the largest student turn-out yet (25 students; 14 Arab, 11 Jewish). Most of the Arab group were Bedouin women from the south of Israel. Social activism is important to the SFP so in this course, a follow-up of the course taught in the first semester, students volunteer two hours a week in NGOs working on human rights and/or Arab-Jewish relations.

In this second semester students are required to volunteer for 2 hours a week in NGOs concerned with Arab-Jewish relations and human rights. Social activism is one of the SFP’s goals and we are happy that this was also important to the BGU course leader Dr Tal Eyal.

The first meeting of the semester opened with a panel of NGO representatives to invite the students to volunteer for the projects they are running.

The Women Lawyers for Social Justice organisation, Ma’aki-Itach (‘with you’ in Arabic and Hebrew), was represented by lawyer Insaf Abu Sharb. Ma’aki-Itach was founded in 2001 by a group of women lawyers in order to represent women living in poverty. The organization deals with individual representation, bringing petitions to court, activism against cases of polygamy, and representation of women who work in low-wage jobs. The students are meant to take part in reception work, drafting position papers, leading projects for women and employment, or convening a forum of Bedouin women that will deal with social issues and bring a feminist discourse into the community of Bedouin women.

The organization Al-Nuhud was represented by Siham Abu Asa and Niva Shooshy. The purpose of the organization is to advance education of Bedouin women in the Negev. 1000 women obtain assistance from the organization over the course of a year. The organization conducts pre-academic programs for high school girls who come for 5 hours a week, for three years, in order to learn English, Mathematics, Computer Science, and Hebrew. Once every three weeks there are also extracurricular activities. The organization runs a project for Middle School girls in order to empower them. An additional project is training female university students in leadership and community involvement. The students from our course can volunteer to translate and to lead these different projects.

The organization Hagar was represented by Orit Frieberg, the director of the bilingual school in Beersheba. The school has existed for 5 years, has 170 students from nursery to Year 6, and operates as a fully bilingual organization. In every class there are two teachers, one Arab and one Jewish, and the children are exposed to both languages from the age of one. The school encourages difference as the children are exposed to all three religions and there is a place for all the national holidays. The point is not to fear the conflict. Our course students can volunteer by developing the website of the School or in working directly with the children in a variety of activities.

Dr. Tal Eyal presented the fourth organization, which is called Sidreh. The organization is based in Lakiya and is designed to represent, empower and improve the economic status of women. It does this by teaching the women literacy, towards gaining Bagrut (high school diploma), weaving, and embroidery work. Our course students can teach English, volunteer in unrecognized villages, help in organizing Smile and Greeting Day for the villagers, and more.

Once a month the course leaders Dr Tal Eyal, Wasim Birumi, and Nava Sonnenschein will accompany the students with monthly supervision, in their volunteer work for various organizations.