Madison-Rafah Journal

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S PEACE SERVICE - PALESTINE NEEDS YOU NOW

We are looking for 30 women to join our international team working in the Salfit region of the West Bank. These new long-term volunteers will become the core members of the organization. Most travel and living expenses are met by the project.

The aims of IWPS-Palestine are:

1. To support nonviolent civil resistance by Palestinians and Israelis, and to create space for people to become more involved in resistance.
2. To monitor human rights abuses, provide accompaniment, and intervene nonviolently to try to prevent human rights abuses.
3. To alert the world community to human rights abuses in the Salfit region and to effect change in world opinion about the occupation.
4. To provide an experiential model that can be used to create international women's peace teams in other areas.

IWPS functions through working groups comprised of its members. These working groups are responsible for specific areas of work and form the backbone of the organization.

New long-term volunteers (LTVs) will commit to the project at least through December 2006 (preferably longer). Each year, LTVs will:
- attend a training and meeting
- spend between 3 and 6 months in the IWPS house in Palestine
- when not in Palestine, spend 5-10 hours per week in their home countries working to maintain the organization

LTVs must:
- commit to the aims and objectives of IWPS
- be comfortable working in English (all IWPS meetings and reports are in English)
- have, or learn, basic colloquial Arabic (Palestinian dialect)
- have easy access to e-mail and some degree of computer literacy
- attend a 16-day training and meeting before service in Palestine (upon completion of this training, final acceptance to the team will be confirmed)
- be able to work flexibly in a team
- be willing to take on the responsibility of running the organization with other LTVs
- be able to cope with physically and mentally demanding conditions of work

IWPS is run by women from different countries around the world and is intentionally diverse in recruiting support from a wide range of differing racial, age, religious, class and cultural backgrounds. Preference will be given to Arabic speakers, women from underrepresented countries and communities, and women with experience in nonviolent resistance movements in Palestine or elsewhere.

The following costs are met by the project:
- full board and lodging in the IWPS house in Palestine
- traveling expenses to and from your home country
- basic medical insurance (up to 100 British pounds per month)
- an away-from-home allowance of 200 British pounds per month for the months served in Palestine

Please make every effort to apply by April 1, 2005. Interviews will take place between March and May 2005. New LTVs will be accepted on an ongoing basis.

Training and the annual meeting are tentatively scheduled for Aug 16 to Sept 2, 2005. Travel costs to the training will be partially met by the applicant, but the training costs themselves will be covered by IWPS.

IWPS also offers scholarships for poor and working class women from countries and communities currently underrepresented in IWPS, who are only available as short-term volunteers.

For an application pack, please e-mail: iwpsvolunteers@yahoo.co.uk. For further information about IWPS and the last three years of our work in Palesitne, see www.iwps.info.