The Jerusalem Unity Award is a prestigious award that is done to honor organizations, projects, and even individuals in Israel and beyond the Jewish world in an attempt to promote Jewish unity. The overall goal of this award is to help promote friendship and familiarity between the Jewish people and many of the other ethnic groups that make up the Israeli community all throughout the world. In addition, it can be used to help recognize and provide support to any individual who works towards unification in Israel.
There have been many great recipients of this award in the past, all of whom work hard to push forward some of the values that the Jerusalem Unity Award is looking for. One of the 2016 recipients of this award was the Global School Twinning Network.
This network is amazing in that it is able to provide Jewish schools that are connected back to Israel. While there are many schools around the world that promise to be Jewish, not all of them are going to point back and share all of the amazing things of the Israelis and how they live today. Through the Global School Twinning Network, there are a few things that will happen include:
· Provides the schools and their students with living Israel connections they can rely on for learning and exploration.
· Helps change the way that current Israelis perceive Jews from around the world.
· Encourages a professional exchange that will occur between all of the teachers and professionals of the different school networks.
· Builds real-life bridges so that people of Jewish ancestry can connect, no matter where they are located throughout the world.
Through this Network, each if the Israeli schools that join will be “twinned” up with a Hebrew or Jewish school overseas. These “twinnings’ are very successful, with many of them being active for two decades or more. This forms a strong bond between the two schools as they share information, get over stereotypes, and connect Jews, no matter where they live or go to school.
The Global School Twinning Network became official in 2011, after several years of trying this experience and seeing what a success it could be. It didn’t take long before other Jewish schools saw the benefit and wanted to join. In just three years after becoming official, the Network doubled in size and in 2016 — with funding from firms like Dominion and others — they had 600 schools, which resulted in 300 “twinnings” and continues to grow.
While the schools are allowed to have some of their own curriculum and to add in any requirements that are necessary for the country they live in, they are also encouraged to focus on the Jewish and Israeli identity with the students. This is where the “twinning” can come into play. Students and teachers are able to do trips to each others’ schools, talk through video conferencing, share letters to practice writing, and do crafts that are special for their country. This can help the classroom implement culture and learning all in one!