Student receives Nationality Room Scholarship

MSW/MPH student Julie Platt has received the Israel Heritage Room Committee Scholarship, and will travel to Israel this summer. She will be working at the Shimon Peres Center for Peace in Tel-Aviv in the Twinned Peace Sport Schools (TPSS) program. The TPSS is an innovative Sports for Development program that brings together Jewish and Arab, Israeli and Palestinian boys and girls, ages 6-18 from "twinned" communities across Israel and Palestine to play soccer. The program combines soccer with peace building activities that are designed to break down barriers and stereotypes between participants and foster values of peace and coexistence.The joint activities involve having the children meeting their twinned city sports team and playing in mixed and integrated soccer teams. Using informal educational tools and games, values of tolerance, coexistence, mutual understanding, respect and team work are imparted to the children. They learn about each other's cultures, religions, and traditions in a fun, informal educational environment that is incorporated into each joint activity. Activities are designed to break down barriers and stereotypes between participants, and develop trust and group cohesion. In addition, the children learn the basics of Arabic or Hebrew, the language of "the other", in a specially designed joint inter-language learning program which uses vocabulary from the world of sport. Read more about the program here.

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MSW/MPH student Julie Platt has received the Israel Heritage Room Committee Scholarship, and will travel to Israel this summer.