Reena Lazar '81

Alumna of the month

Reena Lazar, Bialik Class of '81, is one of the Executive Directors of the Peace it Together Society, empowering Israeli, Palestinian, and Canadian youths to promote peace through dialogue, filmmaking and multi-media. Her academic background is in architecture (McGill University) and international affairs (Columbia University). She has also been working and training in conflict transformation for the past eight years.

After attending a Compassionate Listening delegation to Israel and Palestine in 1999, she joined Vancouver’s Palestinian and Jewish Women’s Dialogue Group for Peace. Reena was trained in conflict resolution at the Justice Institute of BC and completed the advanced training in Compassionate Listening in Washington State. She was a co-facilitator at “Creativity for Peace,” a summer program for Israeli and Palestinian girls in New Mexico in July 2003. Upon her return, she founded a new organization and led Peace it Together in 2004 and 2006.

The Peace it Together Society has received recognition through awards and media coverage. It won the City of Vancouver’s Cultural Harmony Award and the BC Human Rights Coalition and the United Nations Association of Vancouver’s Renate Shearer Memorial Award. You can see all media coverage, including an article in the New York Times and an 11-minute news piece on the CBC Sunday Report, on the website www.peaceittogether.ca.

Along with the other Executive Director, who is a Palestinian Canadian, Reena is gearing up for Peace it Together 2008 to begin this July in BC. Reena is also an instructor of Peace and Conflict Studies at Langara College in Vancouver. She and her husband have a three-year-old daughter.

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