Alumni
HAND IN HAND’S ALUMNI
The graduates of Hand in Hand’s bilingual schools are our most important ambassadors. With over 700 engaged, socially-conscious young adults, the alumni community embodies the values and skills instilled in them during their Hand in Hand education. They spread a message of shared society to their workplaces, families, and communities. They volunteer, promote social change, launch their own initiatives, and mobilize Arab and Jewish students on their university campuses. Each year this circle of impact grows as new cohorts of graduates join the community.
Hand in Hand’s Alumni Program empowers these graduates to translate their experience at Hand in Hand into activism and leadership in their own communities. Through retreats, dialogue sessions, shared holiday celebrations, and more, the alumni program provides our alumni with the resources needed to harness individual talents into values-driven service and leadership.
Our alumni community also operates in the digital space, connecting graduates located all over the world and transcending geographic limitations to create a worldwide network that offers support and community to alumni no matter where their path takes them.
Whether in person or via Zoom, a committee of Hand in Hand volunteers works together to organize events for our alumni that align with our shared vision. It is our hope that the alumni community will serve as a model for our existing students, and as a symbol of hope for the entire population. We are confident they will be agents of change, advancing a more peaceful and egalitarian society.
“We are the pioneers of a different reality, a better one…when they say peace can’t work, I tell them it’s been working for the past 12 years”
– Tamar Borman, Jerusalem high school graduate
HAND IN HAND’S STUDENT COMMUNITY
Last year, Hand in Hand launched an exciting new alumni initiative: the Jerusalem-based Student Community. The initiative offers a much-needed framework for shared society among university students. It also connects Hand in Hand alumni and their non-alumni peers, expanding the circle of university-aged young adults engaged in equality.
The student community is comprised of 12 Jewish and Arab university students, who live side by side in student apartments and participate in joint learning, dialogue, volunteer work, and community activism. Members of the student community receive a modest stipend to assist with the cost of their tuition while developing their leadership skills.
“When I came to the university, it was hard for me to find people who had had similar experiences in a mixed Jewish-Arab environment. I found huge differences between those who had attended Hand in Hand schools and those who had not. I felt there was something missing, and thought, why couldn’t there be something like Hand in Hand at the University level? This new University student community is providing an answer to that need.”
—Sarah Sheikh, a 2017 Hand in Hand high school graduate and member of Hand in Hand Student Community
