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Programs Jerusalem is a city with many needs and a quickly changing reality. During its development, The Jerusalem Inter-Cultural Center endeavors to meet the city of Jerusalem's needs, in a way that corresponds with the rapid changes and opportunities for growth that occur in the city. Therefore, there is great diversity in The Center's areas of activity, which are all bound together by that fact that they are responses to an urban need related to the multiplicity of identities and voices in the city, through professional assistance to the city's communities and organizations. Cultural Competency CULTURAL COMPETENCY requires awareness that others’ worldviews have different sensitivities to our own, which can drastically affect their perceptions and interactions. While Cultural Competency cannot make officials and service providers experts in minorities’ customs, it does teach them to detect instances in which people’s conduct is dictated by their cultural traditions, and gives them tools to respond in a sensitive and respectful manner, one that builds bridges of communication and enables all parties to move together to resolve issues. The JICC works to improve Cultural Competency both from the top-down and from the bottom-up: We seek to educating government and agency officials on this concept, and operate and support projects that increase the cultural competency of social service, medical, and other service providers. At the same time, we also work to empower disengaged residents with the concepts of Cultural Competency of officials and service providers. Equipped with this base of knowledge, we can provide optimal assistance to all residents. See more on our cultural competency work at the JICC blog. Cross-cultural Conflict Resolution CROSS-CULTURAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION: the JICC’s deep and sophisticated understanding of Jerusalem’s diverse populations is the key to our conflict resolution efforts. We organize and facilitate forums consisting of a wide variety of neighborhood, religious, and business leaders, as well as government and municipal officials, to respond to issues of conflict that affect Jerusalem’s different communities. The JICC also works to create ongoing communal structures (committees, task-forces, networks, etc.) to prevent future conflict and effectively address future tensions. We also develop and operate a number of programs that bring members of different cultures together to share their commonalities (arts professionals, students of social work, etc.) as well as their differences. See more on our cross-cultural conflict resolution work at the JICC blog. Multicultural Deliberative Democracy DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY refers to a state when all members of a community (without regard to social or economic status) are empowered to play a meaningful role in decisions that affect their daily lives, such as education, health and municipal services, housing, and the like. The JICC works to systemically improve and broaden inclusive decision-making in Jerusalem by empowering formerly disengaged populations to take part in the decisions that affect their community. Using the Deliberative Democracy methodology, the JICC works with impoverished communities – Arab, new immigrant, Haredi - to ensure that residents see themselves as stakeholders, who by definition see themselves as empowered to collectively discuss and implement optimal solutions for their community. Capacity Building of Agents of Change (Professionals, Lay-leaders, Organizations) Professionals and lay leaders in positions of influence in their organizations have the potential to positively influence hundreds to thousands of residents with the skills learned in JICC programs. Therefore, most JICC programs target these professionals and lay leaders, supporting them with mentoring and training workshops. Community Dialogue Projects The Jerusalem Inter-Cultural Center is developing a unique method for a multi-cultural community development termed ”Community Dialogue”.  Community Dialogue emphasizes the ways in which various voices in the community affect the public sphere, and it endeavors to create a meaningful social partnership between these voices, while taking into consideration the similarities and differences between these voices' needs. The social partnership which the Community Dialogue process strives to achieve is based on a shared responsibility to the community and its environment; shared ownership over community assets and shared passion to develop the community. The Center utilizes principles and techniques of Community Dialogue approach in a variety of projects of which it is part of. Community Coalitions Community Coalitions are composed of organizations (formal and non-formal) from the public, business and ”third” sector that are interested in being involved with a certain community subject. Some of the organizations come from the community in which the coalition is being formed, while other organizations operate on a wider scale (municipal, national, etc.). The uniqueness of the community coalitions which the Inter-Cultural Center encourages lies in the fact that they combine organizations with different and sometimes even opposing viewpoints on the subjects the coalition deals with. The Jerusalem Inter-Cultural Center's approach to building community coalitions is based on two main sources. The first source is the knowledge gained, through the Jerusalem New-York Dialogue Center,  from The Center's partners in New-York, particularly Bob Kaplan (JCRC) and Prof. Terry Mizrachi (Hunter College), which specialize in this field. The second source is the community dialogue method developed by the Jerusalem Inter-Cultural Center, which sees community coalitions as one of the tools in the community dialogue's ”tool box”. The Arabic-Hebrew Studies Center in Jerusalem One of the most significant obstacles that stand in the way of those interested in creating dialogue in Jerusalem, is language differences. Nearly all the Hebrew-speakers in the city do not speak basic Arabic (Spoken or Standard); Nearly all the Arabic-speakers in the city cannot understand, speak, read or write Hebrew. The Jerusalem Inter-Cultural Center, working together with the Jerusalem Foundation, has set as a goal the emphasis of the need to study the language of the other in Jerusalem. To this end the Hebrew and Arabic Study Center has been founded, where students of both languages learn, in constant dialogue. In addition, programs assist language studies through the internet are being built, and there are efforts to use innovative study programs to teach Arabic in schools. The Jerusalem Inter-Cultural Center's main focus in this activity is the training of professionals operating in areas which require the Jewish-Arab connection. Speaking generally, the Jews who work in the field of Jewish-Arab collaboration usually do not speak Arabic. This lack of knowledge harms the professional quality of the processes in the field and weakens the idea that Hebrew-speakers should know the Arab language. In addition, The Center encourages different bodies to provide every city resident with meaningful training and opportunities to learn the language. Jewish-Arab Cooperation Projects The Jerusalem Inter-Cultural Center, along with the Jerusalem Foundation, encourage the development of a new approach to work being carried out in the field of Jewish-Arab collaboration, based on the special character of Jerusalem's population, its unique position, and the status of East Jerusalem's residents. Indeed, the Jewish-Arab encounter in Jerusalem is different in many ways than the Jewish-Arab encounter in Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian encounter. In order to implement this new approach in a substantial part of the work being carried out in this field in the city, project managers that work in this field in the city are accompanied and provided with professional training, in order to create a learning network of professional project managers that work in Jerusalem. The Jerusalem Inter-Cultural Center and the Jerusalem Foundation's policy emphasizes creating spaces of opportunities to meet and act together, in the field of Jewish-Arab encounter. The Jerusalem-New York Dialogue Center The Jerusalem New-York Dialogue Center (also known as the NYJER Project) creates a unique partnership between professionals in the field of developing a multi-identity community in Jerusalem and New-York. This is an initiative of the Jerusalem Inter-Cultural Center, the CAUSE-NY which operates as a part of JCRC-NY and The Jerusalem New-York Partnership (which belongs to the Jewish Agency and the UJA-Federation of New-York). The basis for this partnership is joint study and work in the field of developing a multi-identity community. The Jerusalem New-York Dialogue Center enables professionals to acquire new practices, to broaden their network of associates in the country and the world and to initiate new projects within their area of expertise. The project mainly addresses field and academic experts in the area of community development, community social workers, projects managers, group moderators in the field of multi-cultural work, agents of change, managers and staff of community development organizations.