Local Women’s Conference 2020

Christian leadership is not solely worked, it is like an orchestra where a team should work together” – Shireen, women’s group leader.

Over a year ago, the idea of recruiting Palestinian women to step up as leaders in their own community was born. We as Musalaha staff were praying for the chance to hold a conference in our local community, where women are enabled to speak up as leaders and take steps to teach others on leadership and reconciliation. These two women’s groups from all over the so-called Westbank area were committed to learn new skills and approaches in Musalaha’s trainings for over a year – and by the very beginning of January 2020, we witnessed our prayers coming true: these precious 53 women led a two days conference in Taybeh village. A conference where the ladies themselves took over the lead in giving the lectures, teachings, facilitating activities and small group discussions, and creating action plans. A spirit of volunteering and leadership emerged:

“I loved it all, but most importantly, I like the teamwork and how tasks are divided within the team.” – Women’s conference participant.

The overall topic of the conference “Leadership and Peace Building – I am unique, influential, and exceptional” revolved around the question of “how can we become peacemakers?”

The uniqueness of women in peace building was illustrated in teachings on the biblical examples of Deborah, Abigail and Mary –

“They draw your attention to things that are in you but I never noticed them or never thought that I am the person to lead or to become active in my own community. You can be a leader in your own circle. If we don’t know where to start with it, this conference was the beginning of the initiative as a platform to continue.” – Women’s conference participant.

How can you be exceptional and then change your surroundings? 

This session pointed the women to begin with themselves before they can move to influence others.  They reflected on their personal obstacles of change, their pains, fears, negative thoughts, and worked out what each individually suffered from and had to get rid of in order to move from the bottom of the mountain to the top. “Stop gossiping!” was one of the immediate transfers to daily life as they realized, that many times the enemy of women are women themselves because of all the gossip that we like to do as women in our culture.

“I felt the importance of women leaders in the society and how to live it and good examples were women from the Bible.” – Women’s conference participant.

How can you be influential?

The Biblical principles of leadership according to Nehemiah were the guidance for the women to take a step of action towards being influential in their own circle and beyond.

Within that lesson, communication stood out as one of the most important aspects of reconciliation and the women learned how to set priorities by analyzing their stakeholders and how to approach them with communication measures.

“There were so many amazing teachers and leaders, there is no need to bring someone from outside – we can be the leaders.” – Women’s conference participant.

These women prepared each other with a solid platform to lead and to be proactive in leadership in their own way. We are so excited to see them speak up in their communities and ask you to join us in prayer for a social change led by empowered women leaders.