In the framework of community activity, and sponsored by the Office of the Dean of Students Affairs, the Koren-Kaye-JITLI Center was established at Kaye College in 2012. JITLI is an international program that works to cultivate leadership among young people and to strengthen the connection between groups of different people who are in a state of conflict.
Within the complex reality of the tension in Jewish-Arab relations in Israeli society, the center was established to enhance relationships between Jewish and Bedouin students, to increase knowledge of the “other” and to strengthen feelings of acceptance and trust. The principles that guide the center’s initiatives are: joint action, experiential learning, activities that respond to shared goals and interests, joint coordination by faculty and students, and student enrichment.
Kaye Academic College of Education provides a home for the center because of the congruence between the center’s goals and one of the central themes to which the college ascribes––the cultivation of multicultural leadership. The center was dedicated to the memory of the late Dr. Yitzhak Koren, a lecturer at the college who was active in rapprochement between Jews and Arabs.
The center offers a variety of programs, workshops and study days among which are the program “Meeting and Taking Pictures” in which pairs of students from both Jewish and Arab populations learn the basic skills of photography then jointly present their work in an exhibition held at the college at the end of the program; a theater workshop; an interpersonal communication skills workshop; and a workshop for faculty aimed at developing skills for dealing with in-class cultural conflicts.