A New Year's message from Alrowwad's founder

Dear friends and supporters of Alrowwad,

As the year 2020 expires its last breaths, with so much pain, hardship and challenges to us as human beings and to our responsibility in building possibilities for our fellow human beings in our own community and in the world, and building bridges to shape a better future for the generations to come, I wish you all health, safety, wealth and happiness. I want to express our deepest gratitude and appreciation for your friendship, support, solidarity and commitment to help us achieve most of our goals and help as many people in need as we could, and create possibilities for women, children and youth to help build a bit of peace within themselves, and live to be better changemakers in dignity and safety.

Despite these challenges, despite huge financial losses due to COVID 19 and cancellation of all delegations, guest house reservations and meals, despite the lack of donors, you have been there for us and contributed with whatever amount you could in such disastrous situation and didn’t give up on us.

We learned a lot during this year. We have seen unprecedented challenges for people who have never experienced lockdowns, limitation of circulation and free movement, besieged in their own houses, separated from their beloved ones, dissociated from their work. We have seen people passing away without any beloved ones in their funerals, without a suitable goodbye. We have seen sick people fighting on their own, and some others struggling to make ends meet without success, and sick people who could not afford anymore to purchase their own medication. We have seen those who were helping others, became in need and couldn’t afford to help themselves. Schools and universities closed, companies shut down, commerce is closed, performance spaces mostly abandoned, artists working online, zooms and webinars became the normal life. Yet, in Palestine, the occupations continued and more ferocious, colonization is more vicious, and the supposed-to-be peace agreements with the normalization of some Arab countries didn’t but reinforced the policies of occupation.

Yet, we continued and will continue again and again. Despite the lockdown and the shrinking of funding, we have been able with the support of some amazing friends and partners to deliver our programs and support to about 8,000 people from 5 years and above, and during Ramadan, deliver about 11,500 cooked meals to more than 4,000 people, distributed disinfectants, food aid and clothes to more than 1,000 individuals, and provide medication for about 120 patients, and carry on with our programs of training and workshops and regular arts programs with theatre, dance, music, photography and video, as well as supportive education program for children with learning difficulties and trauma, and university students scholarships. We organized many zoom sessions and workshops online, and intervened in many local and international events.

With Friends of Alrowwad-UK and AL-Harah Theatre in Beit Jala, Alrowwad co-organized the Bethlehem Cultural Festival online between 3-7 December 2020 with great success. Alrowwad has trained about 40 organizations in 9 govern-orates in West Bank and Gaza, and also in Lebanon on Human rights and capacity building to prepare manuals for their administration and financial, strategic planning and other work procedures.

We continued our infrastructure work improvement in the new building with limited resources… and finally the electricity capacity has been improved to be increased from 63 to 200 amperes after the installation of the new electricity generator.

We are deeply grateful to individuals in different countries as well as to our partner organizations around the world for their support.

Our promise is as always to continue to do what we can and beyond, to inspire hope, save and promote life and provide possibilities for children and youth and women to build peace within themselves and be peace builders in their community and beyond, to pave the road for a change that we can be proud of.

We hope that you will continue to be be our partners, and hope more new friends will join us in our struggle for life, safety, dignity, equality and freedom. We believe that we can do better together than alone. We believe that difference should enrich us and not make us afraid from each other. So if you can, please do not hesitate to support Alrowwad do better for the year to come with all its clear challenges.

With my deepest thanks and appreciation,

Abdelfattah Abusrour

Founder

Alrowwad Cultural and Theater Training Center