Mar Elias Educational Institutions
Ibillin - Galilee
A simple vision: add the letters "B" and "R" to the word "OTHER" and you have "BROTHER." When we accept each other as brothers and sisters, we feel whole. Christ teaches us that we are our brothers' and sisters' keepers.
From the beginning, our vision was to create a school destined for all Children of God, mainly Palestinian Arabs, Christians, and Muslims. Whenever possible, Jewish students are included as well. We wanted the school to be distinguished by creating unity within the diversity of affiliation. Father Chacour continues repeating that we are born babies with the same identity, being created in the image and on the like of God. And we educate our children with readiness to discover in the other a brother and never to look for the enemy in our neighbors much as for the potential friendship.
Father Chacour constantly asks from the students and the body of teachers, whenever they see him, whether on campus or off campus, to give him a "smile of hope." Being together, we are not household and guests; we are all partners in protecting our dignity and building a human future for all of us. We want our new generation to be considered part of a whole, and each part is vital to the others. Our young people must understand that hatred, madness, ignorance, and agony spell destruction. We want our young people to work for construction. It is hard to achieve because you need reconciliation, sacrifice, compassion, love, and vision. Vision without actions is a daydream. Actions without vision are a nightmare. Construction is not easy, but it is the way of Christ. Jesus sacrificed himself to show us the way of love and compassion.
We are all born babies
People are not born Christian, Jew, Muslim, American, German, Mexican, or a police or military person. Everyone is just born a baby in the image and likeness of God. When we meet someone hostile towards us, we must remember that we face a father, son, daughter, wife, mother, sister, or brother who is a human being just as we are. Treating people with respect, dignity, and love gives them a chance to put their hostility aside and show respect for others.
Mar Elias Educational Institutions include a kindergarten, elementary, junior high, and high school. The institution is under the direction of a Board which includes the founder and retired archbishop Elias Chacour. The institutions are located in Ibillin, an Arab village in northern Israel. Arab students from all over Galilee gather at the institutions. The Institution serves Muslim (60%) and Christian (40%) students while extending an invitation to students of other religions.
The institution is a secular school, started as a high school and a kindergarten in the early 1980s.
Mar Elias has become a shining beacon of hope for all people of the Holy Land and worldwide. MEEI was the inspiration of Father Elias Chacour, who also served as the Archbishop of the Melkite Catholic Church of Akko, Haifa, Nazareth, and all Galilee from 2006 until his retirement in 2014. In 1965, when Father Chacour became the parish priest of St. George Melkite Catholic Church in Ibillin, he realized that the future of the villagers in Ibillin, the citizens of the state of Israel, and indeed all of God's children in the Holy Land, would depend on educating the young in the ways of peace, reconciliation, respect, and justice.
Father Chacour thus began his life's work to build schools to educate children of all ethnic and religious backgrounds based upon these principles. That vision is now alive in the schools of Ibillin for more than 3,000 students and faculty of Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Druze heritage, who study and teach together as one community of learning and service. The amazing growth of MEEI from a few students to more than 3,000 in just a few years reminds us of Jesus' miracle of transforming a few loaves of bread and fish into enough for 5,000 to be fed.
The total enrollment is close to 2,500 students, of which 1,000 are in high school. High school students from a 50-mile radius attend school. The high school is among the top-ranked schools in all of Israel. Archbishop Chacour arrived in the village of Ibillin upon his appointment as the Abuna for the St. George Melkite Catholic Church by the then Archbishop of the Diocese of Haifa, Akko, Nazareth and all of Galilee in 1962. One of his first concerns was the children's education, knowing that future opportunities would be minimal without education. First came a library, summer camps, then a nursery school and kindergarten, then the high school, and finally the grammar school, which eventually became grades 1 through 8. In 2004, a new elementary school building was opened. The Middle School is located in the building formerly the high school, a short distance from the elementary school.
