by Sharon Booth, SNS Founder & Executive Director

Having watched the two-part BBC series: ‘The Holy Land and Us’, the immediately intimate nature of the documentary’s approach made me reflect on the power of the personal story for inspiring empathy, and the fact that narratives do not have to agree or be reconciled for something constructive to be achieved.

Nonviolent Communication (NVC) involves expressing ourselves with values such as compassion, clarity, empathy, self-responsibility, and the common good in mind. Utilising NVC allows us to reframe both how we hear others and how we express ourselves by focusing our consciousness on what we are feeling, observing, needing, and requesting. We believe that nonviolent communication is a key way towards helping young people to understand and embrace the complexity of conflicts, and empowering them towards seeking solutions.

We want to live in a fair, compassionate society where we celebrate diversity and protect one another from harm. Whilst some progress has been made in that direction over the past century with regards to freedom of speech; and women’s, LGBTQ+ and BAME rights; in the last decade, things seem to have been sliding backwards again.

Mohammed Ali Amla, Youth & Partnerships Director at SNS, offers an introduction to our work, and we hear from three of our speakers about what the city of Jerusalem means to them, and their respective religious and personal identities. This article originally appeared in the RE Today Magazine.

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