The joint program opens a space for educators to discuss topics of Jewish and Roma identity in an honest, taboo-free environment. It provides them with attitude-shaping methodological tools which can be further used in classroom settings as aids of a prejudice-free and tolerant educational approach.

We are looking forward to inquiries of teaching staff (group size between 15-30 persons). We bring our training program to the sites of the requesting schools, however, upon request, we are able to organize for external locations as well.

Our program wishes to step beyond the usual frames of the education system by initiating a new kind of cooperation between educators open to the involvement of their students in an intercultural and interfaith dialogue. We offer the necessary inspiration and tools for these initiatives within the frameworks of a training for educators.

Educators and students involved in the Common Ground program are builders of a more open, curious, empathic and critically thinking society. They are planning and implementing projects that raise bridges over cultural, social, religious and other societal ruptures.

As of today, Common Ground Program has had the following results:

• Three long-weekend seminars for educators; a total of 68 educators from 12 municipalities and 27 educational institutions
• 25 finished project proposals
• 15 accomplished projects with the active participation of 600 students and more than 40 educators
• Four long-term cooperations between schools (involving joint annual projects)

The play is followed by a theater pedagogy session designed for high school students between the ages of 16 and 18; the session explores topics and questions raised by the theater play. Haver’s volunteers return after 2-3 weeks with another session – this one begins with the closed box from the theater play and it centers around the multitude and complexity of Jewish identities in the present. The time passed between the two sessions allows students to reflect on the issues raised by the theater play which then will be further explored and discussed with the help of Haver’s volunteer peer educators.

The New World education package combines different methodologies in three distinct steps, and it aims to promote intercultural communication, a scaling down of prejudices, and growth in tolerance.

The project brings the theater play to high shcool classrooms and is followed by an informal educational session. It raises the question of how grandiose historical events impact the daily lives of people. Most families have stories and first-hand experiences of the way history and public life interfere with the personal, leading to positive or negative, and sometimes, fatal outcomes. The informal session aims to inspire students who don't know much about the history of their families to take up the initiative to ask and find out more about their family stories from their parents and grandparents.