McGill Middle East Program

The McGill Middle East Program in Civil Society and Peace Building (MMEP) is a unique and exciting example of how a rights-based community practice empowerment initiative can reach across international borders in a collective effort to encourage peace, understanding, and social justice. The MMEP, in cooperation with its Jordanian, Israeli, and Palestinian institutional partners, has established six storefront practice centres in the Middle East. To see their website for more details, [http://www.mcgill.ca/mmep click here] .

Over the last seven years, these centres have implemented innovative and effective programs to promote empowerment, equality, and civil society among disadvantaged communities in a region already coping with violence, conflict, and economic hardship. A new Practice Centre was recently opened and three more centres are planned for the coming year. The MMEP team at McGill and its regional partners continue to defy both conventional wisdom and the logistical constraints of the Middle East conflict to advance the cause of peace in the region.

One of the central vehicles through which the MMEP achieves these objectives is its Fellowship Program. Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian students earn their masters degree in social work at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, then return to work in the program's six practice centres in the region's most disadvantaged areas.

Since this unique program began in 1997, 36 MSW graduates and 7 Community Practice Fellows have helped Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian academic institutions and NGOs implement innovative and effective rights-based community practice programs in the poorest neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem, West Jerusalem, Beersheva, Nablus and Amman. A fifth cohort of ten MSW Fellows is currently studying at McGill.

The program was founded by McGill University Social Work Professor Jim Torczyner, a native New Yorker who has been teaching at McGill since he earned his doctorate from Berkeley in 1973. In 1975, he founded Montreal's Project Genesis, now a model of the rights-based community practice social work implemented in the Middle East through the MMEP.

Rights-based community practice social work is guided by the following principles: That all individuals are rights-holding citizens; that the state must act inclusively and transparently when it allocates resources; that all citizens have the right to participate in the decisions that affect their lives; and that all citizens have the right to high quality care and services and that failure to provide those services is a violation of human rights. The success of the MMEP practice centres has underscored a growing recognition of the link among human rights, poverty alleviation and empowerment as an alternative to violence in the face of conflict and hopelessness.

The six centres serve over 100,000 low-income individuals annually.

The centres are supported by a unique alliance of Palestinian, Israeli and Jordanian academic institutions and NGOs who comprise the program's partners in the region: Palestinian Universities An Najah and Al Quds; Ben Gurion University and Community Advocacy Israel; and The University of Jordan and The Jordan Red Crescent.

In December, 2003, the Canadian International Development Agency extended its major funding of the MMEP for an additional three years, with the approval of a second and larger grant of $4.4 million toward Phase II of the program. In 2007, CIDA approved a two-year, $3 million Phase II extension, a testament to Canada's belief in the importance of this program to the future of the Middle East.