PPI creates a safe space for children from different backgrounds to come together and form personal relationships.
Bonds among players, between players and coaches, and from players to the outside community amplify PPI's impact and help transform so-called "intractable" conflicts.
Peacebuilding. Conflict resolution. Coexistence. Community relations. There’s no shortage of possible terms out there that describe what PeacePlayers International and the many organizations like it do, each one with different connotations and shades of meaning. Some of this is cultural – “community relations,” for example, is far more common in Northern Ireland than in the Middle East – but it also speaks to very real differences in approach.
PeacePlayers International works in slightly different ways in each of the communities where it’s active, but we’ve found one term that describes our overall approach best – “conflict transformation.” Maya Hemed, a student at David Yellen College who recently studied PeacePlayers International in the Middle East from a theoretical angle, explains:
Through its actions, the organization reflects an attitude to conflict according to which the conflicted parties should come together (preferably at a young age) and produce a positive and neutral atmosphere through joint ventures. This atmosphere will affect generations to come.’
Maya asked Karen Doubilet, PPI-ME’s Managing Director to elaborate:
“The idea is to create a safe place for the children, so that they can have the opportunity to see each other as people. Where we work, Arabs and Jews generally do not have the opportunity to meet and have positive interactions.”
In short, PPI is not “solving” any conflicts in and of itself. Rather, the hope is to create a safe and neutral space for parties to solve their own conflicts – creating an “out of the box place” in Arbinger parlance. Karen provides an example:
For example, when little children, Jewish children, call their Arab coach rather than their Jewish coach, it means that there is a strong bond bringing them together.
PPI doesn’t make these children call coaches from one or another background, but it does create a structure where one child and one adult can form a deeply personal bond on their own. Through the accumulation of these bonds – coach-player, coach-coach, player-player, player-family – PPI creates a whole new structure of relationships that won’t resolve any one political problem, but just might transform the terms of the debate.
PeacePlayers International – Middle East is partially made possible by the generous support of the American people through USAID.
