McGill professor wins international education award
By CJN Staff
Friday, 29 October 2004
Prof. Jim Torczyner, founder and director of McGill University’s Middle East Program in
Civil Society and PeaceBuilding, has won the Canadian Bureau for International
Education’s prestigious award for innovation in international education.
The annual award, which will be presented to Torczyner in Ottawa Nov. 14, recognizes
extraordinary contributions of national or international magnitude in the field of
international education.
The Middle East Program in Civil Society and PeaceBuilding (MMEP) provides
fellowships to Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian students who earn masters’ degrees in
social work at McGill and then return to work in the program’s five storefront practice
centres in the Middle East.
The program comprises a unique regional network of Palestinian, Israeli and Jordanian
academic institutions and non-governmental organizations: Palestinian universities An
Najah and Al Quds; Ben-Gurion University and Community Advocacy Israel; the
University of Jordan and the Jordan Red Crescent.
Torczyner, a native New Yorker, has been teaching at the McGill School of Social Work
since 1973. In 1975, he founded Montreal’s Project Genesis, which inspired MMEP’s
model of rights-based community-practice social work based on the principle that all
individuals are rights-holding citizens and, when empowered to access their rights and
entitlements, are less likely to turn to violence.
Since MMEP began in 1997, 26 graduates have helped the regional partners implement
programs in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, West Jerusalem,
Be’er Sheva, Nablus and Amman. The five centres serve more than 75,000 low-income
individuals annually.
Last December, the Canadian International Development Agency extended its funding of
MMEP for an additional three years, with the approval of a second and larger grant of
$4.4 million toward the second phase of the program.