Our Mission

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)
Caldwell Slide

The Wi’am Children’s Playground, situated next to the Wall. Painted by our friend, Dr. Ronald Caldwell.