Paul Calvert spoke with George Saadeh from the Shepherd's High School in Beit Sahour, about the challenges and trauma the children face and the importance of teaching them about peace.

Paul: Do you have children that suffer from trauma here?

George: Different traumas. Our life is a big trauma. Yes some children have special trauma, but not like the children who have trauma in Gaza, or the trauma of the children that are living in Syria. But we have our own special trauma that we need to deal with these children about. But unfortunately we don't have the proper psychological specialist to deal with our trauma situation.

Paul: How important is it to teach peace to the students?

George: It's very important to teach peace. It's very important to teach the debates for the children; how to negotiate, and how to express themselves, because the lack of information for the children is a problem. Especially for the new generation. To introduce to them our history and why the occupation happened. Why we are living like this. We need some historical information to emphasise to them and to teach them how to dialogue and how to negotiate with each other. How to manage in their life and how to administrate their work.

It's very important for the families to create a new generation that believes in peace and international law. Never the less we are living under occupation.

All the world are seeing what is happening to us and they are not doing anything for us. So we have to help ourselves, we have to raise our children in a different atmosphere and to teach them why it's happening and never lose hope to reach solutions. We have to learn how to try to approach solutions towards peace and towards getting our proper legitimate rights to free Palestine and to have our own country.

Paul: What sort of activities do the students get involved in?

George: First of all there is the Palestinian curriculum. Then outside this curriculum we have many non-curriculum activities, like sport, music, folklore dancing and arts. There are also different activities like question and answer, debates, planting agriculture, and other different things. We try to give them non curriculum materials and teach them varieties in our school.

Paul: Do these activities help to build confidence in a child?

George: It helps to build confidence and knowledge. It helps to tighten them with the local outside society.

We have with some trips for outside, like this summer we sent children to Cyprus to meet other children in Cyprus. It was a different culture. We sent some children to Denmark to meet other students and see how people there live in Europe; what is their mentality to compare and to learn. The more they learn the more they get strong in life.

Paul: Is cultural exchange important to the school?

George: Yes cultural exchange is very important. The global became very small for us, with all this IT technology like Facebook and Google. They have to learn more about other people, so the world is becoming smaller. We have to prepare them for the outside world also.

Paul: Do foreign students come here to the school as well?