Young Ambassadors for Peace (YAP)

The Young Ambassadors for Peace (YAP) program equips young Palestinians and Israelis, aged 19–30, to become leaders and advocates for dialogue, reconciliation, and peace. Over the course of a year of learning, dialogue, and joint action, participants gain the knowledge and practical tools to facilitate conversations, deepen their understanding of the other side’s narrative and lived reality, and carry a message of reconciliation into their own communities. This comes after a meaningful personal journey of getting to know one another and engaging more deeply with each other’s experiences.

YAP meetings take place across Israel and Palestine and combine joint Israeli-Palestinian sessions with separate uni-national meetings for each group. During the joint sessions, participants engage with both the Israeli and Palestinian narratives, discuss the conflict and the events unfolding around them, and encounter perspectives they may rarely have the opportunity to hear within their own communities. The uni-national meetings provide each group with a separate space to process the experiences, questions, and tensions that emerge from the joint encounters. As part of the program, participants also initiate and take part in joint solidarity activities supporting Palestinian communities in the West Bank.

A highlight of the program is two week-long seminars abroad each year, held in partnership with New York University (NYU). At NYU’s campuses in Prague and Berlin, YAP participants are joined by Jewish and Muslim NYU students for an intensive week together. They continue developing their capacity for joint leadership while also traveling, spending time together, exploring additional narratives and conflicts, and sharing experiences that deepen the relationships built throughout the program.

Throughout YAP, participants also develop practical skills in personal storytelling, public speaking, and designing and implementing joint projects. After completing the program, they can go on to serve as counselors at the Parents Circle Summer Camp, accompanying a younger generation of Israeli and Palestinian teenagers through their own process of encounter and dialogue.

Since 2017, approximately 120 young Palestinians and Israelis have participated in YAP. Participants include both young people from bereaved families who are members of the Parents Circle and young people from the wider community who share a commitment to dialogue and peace.