Greetings!
We have welcomed 2010 with many new hopes and aspirations for the coming year. The last three months of 2009 at Project Hope were busy and filled with new projects, classes and as always, lots of enthusiasm. French, English and Japanese language classes continued. Art, violin, photography and yoga classes played a large role at Project Hope as well.
- In October, 13 volunteers from 8 countries taught 220 students in 20 centers.
- In November, 14 volunteers from 8 countries taught 701 students in 20 centers.
- In December, 11 volunteers from 8 countries taught 765 students in 19 centers.
Several informative workshops and lectures were held during this period. In October, discussions were held at the office for international volunteers who wanted to learn more about Palestine as well as a presentation about the architecture and cultural heritage of Old Nablus was held at Project Hope office by the engineer Naseer Arafat and a lecture and discussion about health care in the West Bank held by Dr. Ghassan Hamdan of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMR). In November there was a presentation about the changes in the economy by Mr. Nameer Khayyat of the Nablus Chamber of Commerce and Industry and an evening presentation by the director of the Water Supply and Sanitation Department for Nablus and the surrounding area.
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Photography
 During the months of October and November, forty-five school drop-outs from Nablus took part in a photography workshop. Together with a photojournalist from Canada they worked on capturing personal identity through the use of cameras. The boys learned many photography techniques and wrapped up the program by holding an exhibit in Nablus so the public could see their final products. Please visit the link below to see the incredible work these students have done.
http://projecthope.ps/projecthope/wb/photoblog/2009/10/17/je-serais-ill-be/ |
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Summary of 2009
In 2009, Project Hope had a total of 10 400 students based on non-unique monthly placements.
-English classes had 5696 students (an average of 517 per month) -French classes had 1124 students (an average of 101 per month) -Blog classes had 473 students (an average of 43 per month) -Social Justice classes had 223 students (an average of 45 per month)
The Arts continue to be the most popular form of activity with volunteers offering new skills and classes each year. Here are the different major arts programs that were offered in 2009: -Drama/Drama Therapy had 620 students -Visual Arts had 359 students -Mural workshops had 25 students -Graphic Novels had 46 students -Photography workshops had 425 students Athletics remain popular amongst the youth of Nablus. Through dance, sports, and fitness programs children have a chance to work on team building skills as well as physical activity. Activities can vary depending on the specific skills and interests of the volunteer:  -Spanish dance had 22 students -Gymnastics had 41 students -Yoga had 100 students -Dance had 60 students -Aerobics had 75 students -Fitness had 60 students -Soccer had 30 students Music continued to play a key role at Project Hope with students having a chance to learn guitar, piano and violin in a small class environment. There was also a spring music program that ran for two months at Dar Al-Fanoon: - Guitar had 9 students - Piano had 32 students - Violin had 41 students - Spring Music Program had 45 students Aside from the major English and French language programs, Project Hope was able to offer classes in a few different foreign languages spoken by volunteers:
-Japanese had 24 students -Italian had 35 students -Spanish had 1 students The Winter and Summer camps were a success yet again with great attendance and a variety of activities offered each day to keep the children busy and active: -121 campers in the winter children's camp program -65 campers in the summer children's camp program A few specific workshops were offered throughout the year: -The cultural exchange program had 41 participants -The digital storytelling program had 72 participants -Health Initiative First Aid had 40 participants -CV workshop had 45 participants This year Project Hope worked in: The cities of Tulkarem, Jenin, Nablus and Qalqilia The refugee camps of Balata, New Askar, Old Askar, Al Ein, and Al Faras and the villages of Balata Village, Askar Village, Salem Village, Hawwareh Village, Deir Sharif, Dayr Al- Hatab, Bayt Fourik, Bayt Dajan, Bayt Wazan, Bayt Mreen, Odala, Awarta, Jourish, Yanoun, Durif, Bourin, Aseerah Al-Shamaleyyah, Aseerah Al Kibleyyah, Kufur Jammal, and Kufur Kallil. During 2009 Project Hope had an average of 23 Palestinian volunteers per month. It had 3 training and cultural opportunities for Palestinian volunteers in Europe. There were 101 international volunteers from 17 different countries with an average of 19 per month with 2-3 month stay averages. We worked with 50 Palestinian organizations and 8 UNRWA schools and 20 different international organizations.
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Bridge to the World Blog Classes
 The Bridge to the World program continued this fall with the students who had been part of the summer program. One of the volunteers from Holland visited her blog students in their homes during examination time. She met with families and gave the children a chance to photograph their houses and families. Facebook accounts were created for each student for the blogs. Previously the students were posting on Wordpress but Facebook is more familiar and more "user friendly". Regular English classes began after the summer vacation in the UNRWA School-system. As a new initiative, UNRWA is opening schools on Saturday. Along with teaching English, Project Hope has begun facilitating fun activities and art classes for the students on Saturdays. |
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Le Petit Prince
 A Swiss volunteer led a project that focused on the novel 'Le Petit Prince' in French classes in order to combine language and art activities. The project took place in the following three centers: Happy Childhood Center (Balata Camp), Al-Safeer Center (Askar Camp) and Rab'a Al-Adawya Center (Northern Aseera). The teacher would read the novel to the children in order to work on reading comprehension skills while the students read along. Then the class was asked to imagine what they had read and put it down on paper as a drawing.
Now that her project has ended, she will upload the children's pictures to a blog on the Project Hope website. When she returns to Switzerland is planning an exhibition of the children's artwork alongside the artwork of Swiss children.
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English Classes
Learning English for Palestinians can be of much more value than just a new language skill. The ability to communicate in English opens doors to the world. Speaking and understanding English provides hope and opportunities. It also helps to get the true stories of what life is like in Palestine and what is happening on a daily basis.
Project Hope offers English classes in the UNRWA schools and in a variety of other locations. An average of 517 students were taught per month 2009.
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Activities at Project Hope
As always, Project Hope volunteers had many talents to share. This fall they gave classes in Japanese, CPR and First Aid, Violin and Photography.
Yoga
Yoga therapy provides relief from stress as well as many other mental and physical ailments. It is based on the idea that mental health and physical health are directly related. Yoga views the person as a whole - body, mind and spirit. There are almost no recreational activities for women in Nablus which adds to the value of these classes.
The Yoga program continued throughout the fall months. There were regular classes as well as special ones for people with Multiple Sclerosis.
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Palestinians from Project Hope in Greece
 An account written by exchange participants Hamza Faddah, Tawfiq Abdel Raheen, and Maissa Khwaireh.
We participated in a project which gathers youth from European countries and from the Mediterranean countries such as (Spain, Italy, Romania, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and Palestine) in order to talk about the second generation immigrants. We were between 45 to 50 participants with the crew of the association ANCE which realized the project. We had theater (play) classes in which we describe the life of the immigrants by playing some games and performing plays, we also played the game Treasure Hun, we were divided into groups consisting of 6 persons per each. This game was good in order to know more about the city and to communicate with the people plus this we made more exercises in order to know more about the immigrants' life.
Next, we made discussion groups which were very useful to know the development of the immigrants issue in each country especially about the difficulties and behaviors problems they have.
The last two days there was a festival in which out in the hall all the participants had to stand to present their country and their organization and inside the place was divided in different places for sculptures, photographs, a place for conference, discussion and the films, concert and the theater.
The activities during the festival were as the following:
The first day there was a press conference for some countries and after it they present films in which they showed our film (Life Under the Sea) and then the hall activities were in Greek.
The second day there was the discussion session in which we participated and we informed the audience about our refugees issue and the reaction for it was positive.
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