Education for Peace and Community Development Responding to a request by leaders of an Israeli and a Palestinian non-governmental organization, the National Peace Foundation (NPF) has joined the Institute of World Affairs (IWA) in preparing a plan for a three-to-five year program for dialogue involving leaders of youth organizations in both jurisdictions. The program will draw on the NPF's decade of experience in functional peacebuilding in the South Caucasus and IWA's decade of similar work in the Middle East. Functional peacebuilding means joint efforts to address common substantive problems -- such as education, jobs, humanitarian needs -- that affect parties on opposite sides of a conflict. The process begins even in the absence of formal peace agreements, involves all partners in identifying priority issues, then develops ways to deal with them together. The goal is to develop a viable, on-going citizen-based effort dedicated to peaceful co-existence and the development of strong civil societies. Significant support has been committed directly to the Israeli and Palestinian organizations by the U.S. State Department's "Wye River" peacebuilding fund. National Peace Foundation members have contributed a first component match to these funds. The Papendreaou Foundation of Greece has joined IWA, NPF and the Palestinian and Israeli NGOs as a fifth partner. This organization will provide the venue and otherwise support the early meetings, the first of which took place in mid-November 2001 in Athens. NPF Vice Chairman Landis Jones, is taking the lead in this program, working with our colleague, IWA President Hrach Gregorian.

About Chairman Landis JonesLandis Jones has been a scholar and teacher, primarily at the University of Louisville where he has served as chairman of the Department of Political Science, Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and interim Director of the School of Urban Policy. For his own university, he helped to develop and subsequently to direct (1988-95) one of the country’s most distinguished prizes in peacebuilding, the Grawemeyer Award in World Order (which in 1998 was awarded to NPF Advisor Herbert Kelman). Dr. Jones is the author of many books and articles on the political and governmental process and is currently reviewing, as a case study, the reorganization of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, about which he is genuinely interested but appropriately dispassionate.

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