Tech2Peace
Tomer Cohen is the Co-Founder and Director of Tech2Peace.
Tomer formerly founded the youth branch of a major Israeli grassroots peace movement, "Israel Hofsheet," or "Be Free Israel," which "strives for an Israeli society that practices cultural and religious pluralism, protects civil rights, and upholds the principles of democracy and Zionism as put forth in the Declaration of Independence." During this time, Tomer led many campaigns, for example: fighting to stop the incitement against Arabs in Jewish society, resisting the exclusion of women in the public domain, etc.
Before his mandatory Israeli army service, Tomer helped establish the “Snowball Project”, which aimed to connect Israelis and Palestinians through informal meetings. Meanwhile, Tomer was the fundraising manager in “The Green Movement,” a social-environmental party. After the military, Tomer volunteered in the office of Knesset Member Yael Cohen Paran.
Young Palestinians and Israelis grow up not knowing, and often demonizing, the "other." Existing peace initiatives in Israel-Palestine and around the world commonly fail to create strong, lasting bonds. Furthermore, young people in marginalized areas of Palestine-Israel and other parts of the world struggle to gain access to the growing high-tech sector.
Tech2Peace hosts two-week long technology training and dialogue seminars where young Israelis and Palestinians build strong, empathetic relationships and learn technological/entrepreneurial skills. Relationships are maintained through ongoing community interactions.
Our model, leveraging technology in the pursuit of peace, has been proven to build relationships and understanding in ways that traditional dialogue does not, while at the same time providing economic opportunities.
There are current plans for our model to be replicated in South Africa by MIT MISTI. This model applies across conflicts around the world.
(1) Ethnic conflict - Although Palestinians and Israelis live close to each other, very few opportunities for positive interactions exist. Thus Israelis and Palestinians hardly know each other and may have a negative image of one other. This helps to reinforce and widen the conflict.
(2) Youth unemployment - In Palestine and in the Israeli periphery, young people find it hard to find employment opportunities and to dream of a successful career. Young people in conflict regions, who do not believe in their ability to have a bright future, may experience frustration, which can lead to radicalization.
(3) Lack of effective peacebuilding activities - There are a general lack of global peacebuilding activities. Furthermore, most existing peacebuilding activities simply bring the two parties together to talk about big issues, without building trust by working towards shared goals, creating community through co-living and social activities, or fostering continued engagement. Other peacebuilding activities feature work towards shared goals without dialogue, leaving issues as "elephants in the room."
(4) Shortage of high-tech workers - The global high-tech sector constantly has need for new, skilled employees. However, it is difficult to break into the high-tech sector, especially for those from the global socio-geographic periphery.
T2P hosts two-week long, residential seminars for young Palestinians and Israelis, blending technology / entrepreneurship training, conflict dialogue, and social activities, along with continued community-building events post-seminar.
Most peace initiatives engage the same groups of left-wing activists, and create weak bonds: through simple dialogue, or through working towards shared goals without dialogue.
T2P participants build strong relationships through:
working together towards shared goals of learning technological skills and completing projects;
getting to know each other through co-living and social activities; and
learning about each other's perspectives in a trusting environment through conflict mediation sessions.
T2P draws diverse participants, especially those from peripheral areas, who are interested in learning technological skills, going beyond the typical groups involved in peace initiatives. And T2P helps maintain group bonds by curating ongoing community events and interactions, like a recent panel and meetup at WeWork Tel Aviv, a T2P partner.
Lastly, T2P participants gain access to economic opportunities through:
new and valuable skills - both soft, like team-work and project management, and technical, like website development and 3D design;
interactions and lectures with industry professionals and mentors;
advanced entrepreneurial trainings and opportunities provided by Google for Startups and 50-50 Startups
curated internship and job opportunities
Israelis and Palestinians reaching adult age today cannot remember a time when there was real hope for peace, and grew up with the traumas of the intifadas and subsequent conflicts. Palestinians and Israelis live geographically and culturally separated from one another, isolated by tangible and intangible borders. Even Israeli Jews and Arabs rarely know each other - most receive separate educations and there are only a handful of “mixed” Arab and Jewish cities in Israel. Under these conditions of separation, harmful stereotypes and misinformation flourish between the two sides.
Additionally, there is a lack of access to meaningful employment opportunities in the Israeli periphery, the Palestinian territories, and Israeli-Arab society. Young people in conflict regions, who do not believe in their ability to have a bright future, may experience frustration, which can lead to radicalization.
We provide the opportunity for young Palestinians and Israelis to meet each other in a secure context; to work with each towards shared goals; to build friendships through social activities; and to gain meaningful opportunities in tech and entrepreneurship.
We currently have over 400 applicants from Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank for 60 spots in our summer 2020 seminars. The demand is huge.
- Elevating understanding of and between people through changing people’s attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors
The core of our mission is to create strong, empathetic relationships amongst conflicting groups. We believe that we take an innovative approach to this, both through the use of technology in peacebuilding, and through a multi-faceted peacebuilding methodology utilizing both shared goals, dialogue, and community-building. Utilizing technology in peacebuilding is especially beneficial as it allows us to recruit participants from outside the traditional "peace camp." Evaluations have shown our model is effective in building empathetic relationships, and our model is now in the process of being replicated around the world. We additionally provide economic opportunity for marginalized populations.
I grew up in a right-wing Israeli Jewish family, but started attending Israeli-Palestinian peace camps as I got older. In every camp I made great friendships, but after the programs finished, the friendships would disappear. Additionally, every year, most participants tended to be from the same liberal circles.
During my mandatory military service, I was a combat officer in a technological warfare unit, using technology to defend my country in the 2014 Gaza War. But as war was waged around me, I often thought to myself, "why can't we use this technology to wage peace and build bridges instead?"
I realized that technology can fix the problems of the peace camps by giving diverse Israelis and Palestinians life skills and shared goals, which enable them to build strong relationships, continue working together, and achieve material success. And I realized the relationships formed during technological training could also be better maintained through strong community-building. So as a university student, in partnership with two seasoned mediators, I launched Tech2Peace.
Please see above.
My experience in peace camps growing up was highly impactful on me. I was so optimistic after every summer that there was hope in this conflict. But time after time, the relationships fell away, and the peace camps led to almost nothing.
Like most Palestinians and Israelis, I am sick of this conflict. I am sick of the death, of the human rights violations, and of people feeling there is an unknown enemy, living so close but so far. I have little faith in the political process. We must do what we can at the grassroots level.
What I have seen in Tech2Peace is nothing short of spectacular. Young Palestinians and Israelis, many of whom are not traditional "peaceniks" - religious, right-wingers, conservative - coming together, building friendships, learning tech skills and creating amazing joint projects, and maintaining bonds long after the program - creating an alumni community for themselves full of amazing content. Our alumni are also going on to create and pitch start-ups together through 50-50 Startups in Boston, opening the possibility for joint Israeli-Palestinian ventures that embed peace in the economy. It is nothing short of amazing.
My co-founders - Abeer, who is Arab, and Uri, who is Jewish - are conflict mediators with over a decade of experience co-facilitating an Israeli-Palestinian mediation group called Yad b'Yad, which has had immense success in breaking down barriers among 150 people young people that meet once a month. Uri also spent more than a decade as a project manager in the high-tech industry.
Uri, Abeer, and I met as co-facilitators at an international youth camp in Holland. We immediately began discussing how to improve on our past experiences with peace initiatives - them with Yad b'Yad, and me with peace camps.
Uri and Abeer are primarily responsible for developing and implementing the conflict mediation curriculum, as well as generally managing group relations. I utilize my leadership experience from different movements and the army to manage Tech2Peace as a whole, especially focusing on logistics and fundraising.
Tech2Peace has thus far been run on a largely volunteer basis, while I study in university and my co-founders work in other jobs. We manage an often-shifting group of volunteers, sometimes meaning we need to quickly pivot to fill roles and re-train staff. Despite the challenges of working with a mostly-volunteer organization and managing Tech2Peace while in university, Tech2Peace has taken off and had immediate success, winning the Israeli President's "Israel Hope" award and receiving international recognition (e.g.: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48053200?fbclid=IwAR0YuC79KuwPZinmawSjb7LTbtqw-yA2NASRiBC2AkZspAi-ryxpuFnqXIc)
Another challenge was securing permits for Palestinians to enter Israel for the seminars. Many peacebuilding activities in Israel-Palestine lack cross-border engagement as securing permits is notoriously difficult. We spent months meeting a series of government officials in order to secure these permits.
I formerly founded the youth branch of a major Israeli grassroots peace movement, "Israel Hofsheet," or "Be Free Israel," which "strives for an Israeli society that practices cultural and religious pluralism, protects civil rights, and upholds the principles of democracy and Zionism as put forth in the Declaration of Independence." During this time, I led many campaigns and protests, for example: fighting to stop the incitement against Arabs in Jewish society, resisting the exclusion of women in the public domain, etc.
Before my mandatory Israeli army service, I helped establish the “Snowball Project”, which aimed to connect Israelis and Palestinians through informal meetings. Meanwhile, I was the fundraising manager in “The Green Movement,” a social-environmental party.
In the army, I managed soldiers and technological systems in sensitive battlefield situations.
After the military, I volunteered in the office of Knesset Member Yael Cohen Paran.
- Nonprofit