"Givat Haviva - The Center for a Shared Society"

By Torsten Reibold

Givat Haviva is the national education and meeting center founded in 1949 by the kibbutz movement Ha'Kibbutz Ha'artzi. It is named after the Jewish resistance fighter Haviva Reik, who was a member of the kibbutz movement.

While Givat Haviva served primarily as the movement's national educational center in its early days, the Jewish-Arab Center for Peace (JACP ) was founded as early as 1963. This foundation was a reaction to the realization that the kibbutz movement's claim to achieve freedom and equality for all citizens stood in contrast to the obvious political, social and economic inequality between Jewish and Arab Israelis. From this point on, Givat Haviva's work as a leading institution for reconciliation between Jews and Arabs in Israel, the promotion of democracy and civil conflict resolution began. In 2015, Givat Haviva also gave itself the subtitle TheCenter for a Shared Society. This makes clear Givat Haviva's mission to create a shared, inclusive and democratic civil society in which all its members feel equally at home and take responsibility for the welfare of society. In the Shared Society program cluster, Givat Haviva bundles its diverse pedagogical, educational, civil society and political individual projects and brings them together in terms of content and pedagogy to form an effective and powerful program bundle.

Givat Haviva works to promote understanding between Arabs and Jews and encourages both population groups to live together in Israel. In the numerous projects, both sides often have the opportunity to get to know each other for the first time and exchange experiences. The aim of the projects is to break down prejudices and promote understanding of the shared responsibility of all Israelis for the future in a just and democratic society. Givat Haviva itself sets a good example in terms of equality: wherever possible, the project teams and many management positions are staffed equally by Jews and Arabs. In addition to the Jewish-Arab Center for Peace, the campus also has an art center, a women's center that designs and implements Givat Haviva's specific women's and gender policy projects, the CoLab, a campus for international partnerships and other Jewish and Arab civil society institutions that wish to establish themselves at Givat Haviva, as well as a renowned center for Arabic language and culture. As genuine parts of the kibbutz movement, there are also archivesdocumenting the resistance during the Shoahand the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement as well as the Peace Library, one of the largest non-governmental private libraries in Israel with a focus on the history of Israel and the Middle East as well as peace education. In summer 2018, the Givat Haviva International School also opened on the campus: an international boarding school according to the IB standard.

Over 50,000 people from Israel and around the world, school groups, educational travelers, student groups and the thousands of participants in the socio-political projects visit the campus every year to learn about democracy, peace and justice. In 2001, Givat Haviva was awarded the UNESCO Prize for Peace Education for its ongoing work in conflict management. Many other awards, such as the Albert Schweizer Award for Excellence from Chapman University, California, the Chaim Konstantiner Prize for Education from Tel Aviv University and the Intercultural Achievement Award from the Republic of Austria have been added over the years. In November 2015, two mayors from Givat Haviva's Shared Communities project were also awarded the Friedrich Ebert Foundation's Human Rights Prize on behalf of all those involved.

Further information:
www.givathaviva.org