As a grassroots organization established in Bethlehem in 1994, Wi’am aims to improve the quality of relationships and to promote peace, justice, a culture of acceptance, and reconciliation in the community. Wi’am strives alongside other forces in the community to build a society based on active participation, citizenship, democratic norms and values, and separation of the four powers (executive, legislative, judicial, and media).
Our mission is to create a culture of acceptance of others as they are, through engaging in conflict transformation and empowering civil society while attending to critical needs for the social, political, psychological, and economic well-being of the community and its members.
Our vision is to bolster a vibrant diversity-in-unity community that cherishes justice and peacebuilding values, enjoys healthy relationships within an empowered civil society system, improves inter-communal relationships, and fosters transformative means of reconciliation.
Values:
- Improving inter-communal relationships and promoting peaceful means of transformation, reconciliation and peacebuilding
- Fostering dialogue, and recognizing it as the essence of human relationships
- Building a culture of peace based on the celebration of differences
- Acting upon restorative justice
- Seeking gender mainstreaming and equality as a means to empower women and girls’ participation in public and political life as equal to men and boys’
- Respecting the personal and emotional needs in conflict through offering constructive counseling to cultivate hope
- Respecting pluralism and freedom
- Enhancing the spirit of volunteerism
- Enhancing youth civic participation and leadership skills through engaging them in advocacy campaigns, speaking tours, and social initiatives
- Calling for gender equality and the implementation of international treaties on the rights of women (UN 1325, CEDAW, Abolition of Domestic Violence)