SCG’s flagship program, BBfP is a multi-year, multi-level leadership development and peacebuilding program that works with American, Israeli and Palestinian teens. BBfP equips participants with the skills and confidence to manage conflicts and become leaders in creating more peaceful, equitable, and just communities.
The program begins with a three-week summer intensive in Colorado and the two-year follow-up program is conducted in participants’ home communities. BBfP provides participants with continued opportunities for advanced leadership, communication, and peacebuilding training through the Leader in Training (LIT) program, Alumni in Action program, Interns for Peace, and staff positions.
The BBfP curriculum is designed to lead participants through both interpersonal and personal processes, to increase their capacity to feel compassion and empathy, and to humanize the ‘other.’ During their time together, participants learn new communication techniques, develop leadership skills, and engage in activities that promote the status and empowerment of women and men as equal partners in creating change. The BBfP methodology is an intergroup intervention that utilizes communication, dialogue and relationship-building techniques, trust building, outdoor education activities, and art to strengthen foundational relationships and improve understanding between groups. BBfP is mostly, but not entirely, staffed by past participants.
BBfP participants are ages 15-19, are drawn from diverse religious, cultural, ethnic, political and socio-economic backgrounds, and are of all sexual and gender orientations.
