American Folk Singer Peter Yarrow (of "Peter, Paul and Mary") will Launch "Operation Respect" in Israel, at Sheba

American Folk Singer Peter Yarrow (of "Peter, Paul and Mary") will Launch "Operation Respect" in Israel, an Innovative Program against Youth Violence Developed in the U.S.

Sheba Medical Center Conference on March 10 to Advance Multi-Disciplinary Cooperation in Combating Youth Violence

Senior officials from the Israeli health and education systems will convene on March 10, 2011 at a conference to be held at Sheba Medical Center to launch a new national program in the struggle against rising violence among youth in schools, homes and the community.

The conference will launch a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary program - Operation Respect - to combat youth violence. Sheba Medical Center and the Israel Government Center for Technological Education (Matach) have joined efforts to lead in the formation of an educational health-care task force.

The man behind this initiative is the American folk singer, Peter Yarrow, former member of the world famous Sixties group "Peter, Paul and Mary". Yarrow is chairman of an international association that has pledged to eradicate violence among adolescents, world-wide.

"Israel will be a model that will prove that joining forces from the fields of education and health contributes to a significant decrease in violence", explains Yarrow. He adds that "the coordination of data collection from the various systems, for example, may prove very effective in improving the identification and reporting of victims of violence".

The task force will subsequently launch an experimental project that will unite experts from both fields to create a new prototype that can be implemented in the effort to prevent and reduce manifestations of violence. These two areas have never before worked cooperatively in the battle against violence, despite its catastrophic impact on both - an unprecedented deterioration in the field of education, coupled with rising symptoms of depression, self-injury, and suicidal tendencies amongst adolescents.

The founding symposium is the fruit of collaboration between Prof. Zeev Rotstein, the director of Sheba Medical Center, and his American colleague Dr. Alex Bernstein, the director of the Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery at New York's Roosevelt Hospital.

Artists David Broza and Amal Murkus, who have previously collaborated with Yarrow on programs to prevent violence in American schools, will appear together in song with the American folk idol during the conference.

Many education and health-care experts will participate in this venture, with support from the Ministry of Health and the United States Embassy in Israel. Among the topics to be discussed are implications of violence for health and education; origins of humiliation and violence; the culture of bullying in the educational system and in the community; and manifestations of violence and frequency - Israel versus other countries.

The conference will be held under the auspices of United States Ambassador to Israel, Mr. James B. Cunningham.

The conference will take place on March 10, 2011, in the Beit Sourasky Auditorium at the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, between 8:30 am and 4:00 pm.