Next Gen Educational Immersive Experience

Each Educational Immersive Experience is shaped around the participant. During his time with B8 of Hope in the spring of 2025, Gabriel Minor combined independent research and mentorship with firsthand encounters with visiting peace activists. The experience allowed him to explore the wider context of Palestinian–Israeli peacebuilding while getting to know the grassroots leaders and organizations behind the work—giving his learning both intellectual grounding and human immediacy.

Ilenia Willmert came to Geneva later that same summer, after spending time with B8 of Hope grantee New Story Leadership in Washington, DC, where she encountered the Palestinian and Israeli team advancing the Phoenix Framework. Her intensive week with B8 of Hope combined guided and self-directed learning with conversations with mediator Pierre Hazan and Shir Yerushalmi of Standing Together, exposing her to both diplomatic perspectives and the realities of grassroots organizing.

Isabelle King and Yasmin Minor joined us a year later for three intensive days exploring the histories, identities, narratives, and present realities of Israel and Palestine. They practiced examining sources critically, noticing how language shapes understanding, distinguishing people from governments and armed actors, listening across disagreement, and resisting the pressure to reduce an extraordinarily complex reality to slogans or simple sides. Their final conversation with Shir from Standing Together brought these lessons to life through an honest exchange about organizing for a different kind of future.

The programs differed in length and emphasis, but their purpose was the same: to help young people become more informed, more reflective, and better equipped to take part in the conversations unfolding around them. Watching them question assumptions—including their own—and choose curiosity over certainty is a powerful reminder that the next generation need not inherit the polarization of the present.