BEYOND WALLS
SERVIZIO CIVILE INTERNAZIONALE - SCI-ITALY
Servizio Civile Internazionale, SCI-ITALIA, is the Italian branch of an international voluntary movement. Since 1948, it promotes projects, workcamps and campaigns in order to support path of active citizenship on themes as peace, human rights, international solidarity, mutual and intercultural understanding, sustainable lifestyle, social movements aiming at changing condition of inequality, injustice, degradation. It co-operates with other S.C.I. branches and partner organizations in more that 80 countries around the world – promoting national and international voluntary activities – as international workcamps, youth exchanges and long term volunteering projects.
http://www.sci-italia.it/index.php/introduzione/135-into-palestina
Our history in West Bank starts on 2000 when we organized the first study visit and started to deep the issue through meetings, trainings, seminars. From 2002 we start a collaboration with ISM working on interposition activities, and in 2004 we recognized the need to think and act not only responding to the emergency condition caused by the second intifada, but more in order to take part in real processes of changes and conflict transformation. First project in this direction was “Democratization from Grassroots”, the creation of media center in Hebron, in partnership with IPYL which finished in 2007.
From this year to 2009 we concentrated in Italy in “Interventi Civili di Pace”: a project on civil intervention for peace, focused on popular resistance and social movements. In 2009 we carried out the project “Bridges on Air”, the realization of radio and video documentaries on the popular resistance realized with Pscc and Amisnet, funded by Anna Lindh Foundation.
Since 2010 we have been following as follow up of Interventi Civili di Pace the olive harvest, a project which every year trains and organizes groups of activist for International presence in the framework of the olive harvest.On 2011 we realized a project together with Active Vision and Amisnet focused on migration routes toward Israel through the desert which was called “Through desert and sea” co-funded by Anna Lindh Foundation.
On 2012 we send 5 Evs volunteers (2 couples for 6 months each, and 1 person for 3 months) supporting Pscc in activities on the ground, capacity building, and visibility and communication work in the framework of a funded Euromed project.And in the same year we organized the first workcamp in the framework of the SCI international network.
Our work with popular struggle in Israel and West Bank is based on the total sharing of contents, objectives and methodologies, starting mainly from the idea of joint struggle as a tool of conflict transformation.For this reason since 2010 we have been looking for different forms of support, mainly through volunteering as first tool of activation and participation.
All our action are based firstly on self-determination of groups involved, their willingness and their needs. All our projects are thought in the framework of our wider action as aiming at recreating a balance in situation of inequality and lack of justice.
Only recently we arrived at the implementation of a EIDHR project focusing clearly on Human Rights Defenders and addressed specifically to the context in West Bank and Israel, although usually our projects foresee more interaction and exchange along participants from different context.
We don't believe in the approach which start from “westerns”, on the contrary in Westbank and in Israel, as all the other countries in which we have relationship, we try to create mechanism of grassroots peer to peer exchange and mutual positive influence in order to image an alternatively idea of “cooperation”, and consequently different models of relationship.
During next years, we will continue our work in preparing and sending activists, in promoting new ways of support and in organizing different kind of activities always as much as possible coherent, creative and innovative.