About IFP

Interns For Peace, Inc. (IFP), founded in 1976, is a non- political, non-governmental organization (NGO) that advances democracy and peace in violent prone streets in the Middle East and developing world. For almost 3 decades, Interns for Peace, through its two autonomous training projects-IFP in Israel, since 1976, and IFP in Palestine, since 1993, pioneered “international prototypes for training society to empower”* the poor to lead community consultations, with inter sector partnering of local and national governments, business and other CSOs to design and initiate together sustainable reform projects to advance civil society, business, education, and women empowerment. As cited by David Shipler in “Arab and Jew”, IFP graduates serve as a “vital reservoir of talent” to advance civil society, human rights, democracy and peace in the Mid-East; IFP civil society reform projects become “public policy” with national/local governments and are sustainable, as part of annual calendars of communities, where IFP operates.

The IFP holistic civil society approach utilizes new methodologies, which serve as models for adaptation in other ethnic, social or post conflict Mid East societies in need of strengthening civil society.   IFP follows the principles of cognitive dissonance, community organizing and cultural/religious respect to engage the entire society from the grassroots to the governing elites in advancing the reform civil society projects. 

IFP recruits the natural leaders of the “street” to foster community- based solidarity to repair civil society. IFP trains these local community development peace workers in a holistic civil society approach and places them with local CSOs. IFP Interns, recruited from the street, serve as positive mentors of self help and role models of civil society and transforming hate into tolerance for the most resistant, traditional, youth, women, and poor from every affinity group to successfully engage them in reform projects to advance sustainable civil society, business, education, and women empowerment.

IFP training sites for the local leaders from the poor are called Tents of the People (or Gathering), which can be schools, CSO centers, a hut, home, open field or actual tent. Interns are trained to organize community consultations and inter sector partnering so as to form a “Tents of the People” Steering Committee, which guides the development of a local Youth & Women Corps, called To Build and Be Rebuilt”. This Youth & Women Corps engages the people from the “street” to democratically design, implement and evaluate for success all of their reform projects to advance civil society, business, education, and women empowerment. Inter sector networking through community consultations and national and local advisory councils foster sustainability. By engaging the community from bottom to top and top to bottom, each Youth & Women Corps naturally builds alumni networks, government and religious leader approval, international/local NGO alliances, public diplomacy outreach, and local cost sharing to rapidly initiate community solidarity driven reform projects to advance sustainable civil society, business, education, and women empowerment. The holistic civil society projects are sustainable as the poor, street, resistant are empowered and government is engaged.

The IFP Approach:

 
IFP-Interns For Peace has been tested and proven in the most impoverished, overpopulated, traumatized refugee camps and streets of Palestine Gaza and West Bank and most traditional and resistant communities in the State of Israel. IFP Youth and Womens Corps reaches the most resistant, traditional, street youth, women and the poor and trains them to lead their people in the reconstruction and reconciliation.

IFP trains local aid workers and educators, from the poor, as community development peace professionals, to economically empower the poor and engage youth in cooperative development, culturally respectful trauma healing and non-violent human rights advocacy by using traditional religious texts to turn youth from terror to tolerance. Being from the street or poor themselves, these college graduates lack the connections and confront a glass ceiling in advancing within their societies.

With acceptance into a local IFP training program, these natural leaders from the poor, are given social entry by IFP, which places them as Intern trainees with local NGOs or institutions like schools or community centers, to serve as aid workers and educators. Poverty reduction becomes sustainable with the intervention of IFP trained Interns from the poor themselves to mentor their neighbors to pull themselves up through self-help projects and to become the owners of the change- both economically and socially.  Reconciliation training to be successful needs to be public policy of the National Ministry of Education and a central component of national reconstruction. IFP trained Interns from the poor are key in being able to join the professional teacher in the hourly weekly tolerance training sessions, where they serve as supporters to the educators and mentors to the youth, who identify with the Interns as peers from their own affinity group. 

Sustainability & Follow Up