Yasmina Mrabet 
Director, Connection Point Initiative
“In both Western and predominantly Arab and Muslim societies the international political arena is dominated by men, and our social structures characterized by insidious patriarchy. Our problems do not lie in our differences, which are not as stark as we believe them to be. Rather, our problems are rooted in a lack of direct communication and interaction.” 
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Arab, Muslim, and Western women need to sit down and talk to one another – now. Persistent misunderstanding about the ‘other’ – cultural, religious, political, and otherwise – is only …

Mazin Qumsiyeh
Bethlehem, Palestine 
“We are hopeful because history is not static.”
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Thumbing its nose at the international community in this holiday season, the Israeli government is going ahead with building thousands of housing units in existing and new Jewish colonization settlements in the Bethlehem and Jerusalem areas. After living 29 years in the US, it is not easy to be living in Bethlehem area.  Life can be at times hard, exhilarating, depressing, fun, and hopeful. Israel occupied this area in 1967, but the landscape had begun to change well before that. In 1948, …

Yasmine Mahmoud Fakhry
Alexandria, Egypt

“I told them that although I wept most of the time, I also laughed a lot, and that even in the time I felt great pain, I also found comfort and strength. I told them that when I cried feeling the pain of others, I felt very human, and that solidarity is the essence of humanity.”
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Being a human rights educator who struggles for human rights in Egypt, I was selected to attend a course on Applied Conflict Transformation by the Action Support Centre in Johannesburg in which …

Nawal Rajeh interviewed Radha Kramer, founder of The TE’A Project. TE’A stands for “Theatre, Engagement and Action.” Radha is the Director of Insight Initiatives at Intersections International.
What inspired your founding of TE’A?
I had experience using theatre as a tool of social change when I worked with the Star Program in New York, and again when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Vanuatu.  With Star and in the Peace Corps, I used theater to teach HIV prevention and I continued this type of work in other projects after I returned. …