Anima Leadership | Special Events

Special Events

Past events

Grassroots Approaches to Change and Conflict Resolution in Jerusalem

Thursday, Nov. 11, 2010 from 12:30pm-2:00pm, Alterna boardroom, Centre for Social Innovation

Anima Leadership is hosting Micha Kurz on Thursday, Nov. 11, from 12:30pm-2:00pm, in the Alterna boardroom. He's here to discuss the ground-level, inter-group conflict and peace-building efforts he's initiated and been involved in in Jerusalem for the last number of years. For anyone who is interested in the regional politics, wanting to understand the complexities, and particularly, learn about processes to intervene in high-intensity conflict situations, join us for a facilitated conversation over lunch.

Grassroots Approaches to Change and Conflict Resolution in Jerusalem
The vague lingo that we regarding political struggles in the Middle East keep us disconnected from what is actually happening on the ground. Terms and phrases such as "one-state/two-state solutions", "settlement freeze", "separation barrier", "terrorism", "Peace Process", etc, that we frequently hear in the media are not enough to describe the policies, the zoning laws, and the struggles of people on the ground today in the region.

The truth is that the complexities of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict -- for which Jerusalem often serves as the high-profile, high-stakes nucleus -- are being addressed by hundreds of individuals and organizations on both sides of the Green Line. Unfortunately, mainstream media rarely cover civil society and grassroots-level organizing that's taking place across the Palestinian/Israeli divide as a means of creating innovative solutions and resisting oppression and to the urgent issues that policymakers create or simply ignore.

Come discuss these creative approaches to change and conflict resolution with Micha Kurz, founding Executive Co-Director of Grassroots Jerusalem, a project that strives to map and network initiatives throughout Jerusalem that address issues ranging from environmental sustainability to human rights and justice in both West and East Jerusalem.

About Micha Kurz, Executive Co-Director of Grassroots Jerusalem
Micha was born and raised in Jerusalem. He was active in the National Youth Movement for over ten years, where he trained teenagers to work as leaders in their local communities. He worked extensively on leadership programs with new immigrant communities in Israel, mainly with youth from Ethiopia and the Caucasus and was one of the first to implement a leadership training curriculum with Bedouin youth.

At nineteen, he joined the Israeli Military as a combat soldier and attained rank of Master Sergeant. After an honorable discharge from the army he co-founded "Breaking the Silence", an organization of former Israeli soldiers speaking out about “our service in the Occupied Territories and the moral price, the degradation of spirit, we have had to pay on both societal and personal levels while serving our nation".

During his travels, Micha has met with grassroots activists around the world and learned the importance and effectiveness of local community organizing. Traveling in and out of the Occupied Territories he began mapping the vast grassroots social justice and environmental sustainability efforts in and around the Jerusalem area. This led him to found Grassroots Jerusalem, a collaborative effort led by Palestinians, Israelis, and international activists.

CSI Sandbox Series:
Animating Social Change

To download PDF Poster please click here.

Playing, exploring and experimenting with new ideas that are changing the world!

Profiling innovators from different sectors, the CSI Sandbox Series is meant to provoke and engage through an exploration of "what social innovation looks like".

Anima Leadership and the Centre for Social Innovation co-present

DEEP DEMOCRACY: Whole System Transformation

Wednesday, Oct. 27th, 2010, 5:30pm - 7:30-pm, Centre for Social Innovation, Alterna Savings Boardroom
$20 (General Public)- $10 for CSI Members (Must register in advance!)

We know we live in times of democratic crisis - only 60% of Canadians voted in the last election, and of that number, only 37% of 18-24 year olds. We hear everyone from politicians to pundits explaining reasons why more and more people are disenfranchised with the current system. And yet, the answers are always 'out there'. Rarely do we look deep enough to understand the root causes of democratic disengagement.

Join special guest Julie Diamond for a provocative presentation and shared imagining of a society where everyone has agency. With municipal, provincial and federal elections coming up in the next year, deep democracy offers some tantalizing possibilities of how to evolve our system at the level of consciousness that created it.

US based thought leader Julie Diamond is a trainer, facilitator and consultant, who has been working in the field of human and organizational change for over 25 years. The author of two books, she currently serves as the Vice President of Academic Affairs for the Process Work Institute of Portland. She writes about issues of leadership, power and learning on her blog, A User’s Guide to Power.

Julie is also offering a 2-day program on Deep Democracy Thursday, Oct. 28th - Friday Oct. 29th. For more information and to register, please visit Anima Leadership.

To register please visit: www.socialinnovation.ca/sandbox .