Language and Communication as a Means of Community Development Workshop
Jerusalem Peacemakers participated in a conference at the Sapir College in Sderot: “Gaza-Sderot: Moving from Crisis to Sustainability“. Over 40 Palestinians came from Gaza, joining Israeli academics and NGO leaders in workshops about the role of civil society in improving communication, the economy, health, and ecology for people on both sides of the border and region. Joining us from Gaza City were Sheikh Bukhari’s daughter Amina and her husband, together we led a workshop entitled “Language and Communication as a Means of Pro-Social Community Development” based on the late Sheikh Bukhari’s message of communication as a means of promoting non-violence.
The workshop was based on the concept that in conflict areas people often create and/or experience pressure from others to use language, to communicate and/or to act in a way that matches one’s “style/beliefs/traditions/heritage”. These modes of language and methods of communication, often hinder positive community development. Instead of promoting pro-social community development, communities often develop norms of violent transactions based on language and communicative strategies that are antisocial. People often hunger/strive for positive/negative strokes by engaging in violent strategies/behaviors in order to gain recognition, attention or responsiveness. One’s subjective/objective communication strategies, including scripts/narratives/stories often get people stuck in certain actions to “prove” one is right, no matter the consequences, even at the cost of pain, compulsion, self-defeating behavior, martyrdom, death and destruction.
In the “Language and Communication as a Means of Community Development” workshop we explored how we are all compassionate by nature and that violent communication strategies—whether verbal or physical—are learned behaviors taught and supported by prevailing cultures. We learned how we all share the same basic human needs, and that each of our actions is a strategy to meet one or more of these needs.
In the workshop the participants learned how to develop greater authenticity in their communication. We explored how to augment positive community development by creating a task force that will focus on increasing understanding and deepening connection. We created and developed systems that empowers peace educators/therapists with the tools to analyze the use of language enabling them to understand/perceive/communicate their life scripts/narratives and to answer questions like:
“What matters?” / “How do I/we get along?” / “What kind of person am/are I/we?” /
“What type of community do we want to develop?”
Through role-playing, mirroring and participatory games/exercises, we perceived / felt / discovered how certain communication patterns of our behavior/feelings/ways of thinking are either functional/beneficial/positive or dysfunctional/counterproductive/negative, which contribute to perpetuate the conflict/tension in the area.
The workshop offered a powerful approach that challenged the participants to discover/formulate a “paradigm shift” to conflict/tension situations while offering creative interrelationship skills to effectively communicate information concerning events/situations that will contribute towards pro-social community development.
More about this conference at: http://www.gazasderot.org/main-e.htm
