Groups for Peace, Ramallah, Palestine
The Groups for Peace is a grassroots organization promoting the culture of peace by educating the local children through regular sessions.
Charity Travel supports the Peace Groups with a donation and the action “Peace of Fruit”, distributing fruits to school children who express their desire for peace.
| Name | Peace Groups in the West Bank |
| Aim | To organize a grassroots peace movement and make sure the Palestinian children grow up with the culture of peace. |
| Since | 2001 |
| Staff | The Center for Peace is run by two men. 20 people (mostly students) volunteer to organize the peace groups. |
| People reached | Each year, 250 children from several villages on the West Bank can take part in the peacegroups. The school we visit for the Peace of Fruit action has 345 children aged 6-12. |
| Contact | anonymous to garantuee their safety. You can contact them via me. A donation can be made to the following bank account: Cairo-Aman Bank, account number 3351840562700, Sameer Saleh |
| Donation | 500 USD |
Since 2001, there is a Center for Peace in a small Palestinian village on the West Bank, operated by two amazing men who both have suffered from the humiliation and the war, but keep striving for peace. In a small school they have organized Peace Groups and once invited guests from Israel to sit down and talk about the peace. This has already proven effective. This village is very peaceful and is reaching out to the inhabitants of the settlements on the other hill. Unfortunately, the settlers would just shoot them when they enter “their” soil. We strongly support this grassroots peace initiative.
Supporting Students
Every year, 130 people from this village go to study in Nablus. Engineering and Finance are popular, but some students pick Political Science because they want to be part of the peace process. We support their transportation to and from the university in Nablus.
Early in the morning I hand over the donation to a student of Political Science, who will make share it with five other students.
Peace of Fruit
We buy fruit for 345 children in the village school for children age 6 to 12. Everybody is helping. There is a truck bringing many crates with fruits from another village, and quick hands put them into 345 little bags, a banana, an apple and an orange for every child. As we drive to the school, a photographer falls from the sky for the second time. It is Lazar, volunteering for the Palestine Monitor and by coincidence in the village to interview the family of a sick child. He offers me to take pictures of the action. So we are welcomed in the school and visit all ten classrooms, where we give every child the fruit. They all smile thankfully, it feels great. I can sense the culture of peace in these moments.
In two classes we ask every child to write “peace” on the blackboard in English or Arabic. They are very enthousiastic about it, and so are we. Thanks to Sami and his groups, these children are growing up in a culture of peace, despite the horrors that happen to many of their relatives. We take a lot of photos of the action.
I call for every visitor to the country of Israel to come to the West Bank, see it with his own eyes and get involved in a similar action. I believe we can make a change together.