New Story Leadership Inc

NSL is a new program that recognizes that after 64 years, the Middle East is trapped in a dysfunctional story system, one that endlessly recyles blame and grievance and refuses to allow the future to have a voice.To change the story, NSL finds ten new voices every year, five Israelis and five Palestinians, aged 20-27, and brings them to Washington DC for a semester, to be inspired by the American story and together, create their own new story of possibility.(http://newstoryleadership.org/wp2011/ 

NSL provides the catalyst and setting for this new story to grow out of the shared experiences of one unforgettable summer. Young Israelis and Palestinians come to America, most for the first time, they work together in top work placements like Congress and the World Bank, they live together in local host families, they experience the American story and a 4th of July. They learn New Story Leadership Method together by coaching the best stories out of each other, and presenting those stories to members of Congress, diplmats and other influential Washington policy makers. Finally, they graduate to join an active alumni network intent on keeping the new story alive.

Our narrative approach of "Change the story, change the world!" is what sets us apart from other programs. Our founder comes from a background in Narrative Therapy that Australian Michael White pioneered in the 1990' (http://www.dulwichcentre.com.au/) This approach says that people are not sick, they just live inside sick stories that systematically impoverish the imagination. What you have to heal is the stories.

NSL does this first by understanding what the old Israel-Palestine story is about, and why it is not working. Next, we help our students reflect on their deeper purposes and create a program of inspiring experiences and supportive audiences that will help them grow a new and better story, a story that serves the best intentions for their lives. 

NSL refuses to allow the conflict  to be the defining story of the identity project of the young Israeli and Palestinian students it selects. Conflict constricts. It hardens the arteries of compassion. It reduces people to caricature and complexities to farce. Young people the world over want the same thing, a life, a career, a family, a future. There is a bigger story out there to be seized and realized than any story about past glory or tragedy. 

NSL sets out to contradict the old story that says, 'Israelis and Palestinians will never cooperate, will never listen, will never even imagine a shared future.' In the first two years of its work, the program has already proved that old story to be wrong. These young people want to work together for what is best. They are sick of the conflict and stalled peace efforts led by leaders they no longer totally trust.

NSL is a model program based on past work the founders have done in Northern Ireland (www.wiprogram.org) and South Africa.(www.sawip.org)  After 17 years, the Irish young leaders program has created a cadre of 450 plus alums who have bridged the sectarian divide in Ireland and are now working to create a new island, no longer divided by hate. That is the model NSL follows, and is applying to the Middle East. 

If you want to be part of this new and emerging story and defy the daily headlines of despair, this is the program for you. We warmly welcome your help and support. We have twenty alums already, and we have hardly begun. When that number is 100 Plus, we will reach critical mass when these new leaders will emerge to shape a future worthy of their best dreams, the dreams that NSL allowed them to create and share.