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Advisory Board's Meeting
November 22nd, 2008
AEI held its
advisory board's meeting on
Saturday, November 22nd,
2008. The meeting took place at the
AEI- Youth House. Three members
apologized for not being able to
attend the meeting: Dr. Sawsan
Hathweh, Miss. Sana Abu Gosh, and
Mr. Yousef Hiremi. The meeting
started with a lunch meal and then
Mr. Fuad open the meeting by
welcoming two new board members;
Mrs. Naela Kharroub, Dar Al Kalima
School, and Miss Aida Abu Muhor,
Good Shepherd's School. Both
expressed their enthusiasm to join
the AEI Advisory Board, as they are
already involved in implementing
some of the AEI school oriented
inter-religious projects.
Mr. Fuad
Giacaman recalled the mission and
the objectives of the institute and
talked about the new formed group,
called "Teachers' Group". There is a
core group of five young teachers,
who are meeting twice a month to
plan for activities, action-plans,
aims and objectives, and come up
with new creative ideas. Later he
introduced representatives from the
other groups to talk about their
activities during the past school
year. Mrs. Magda Abu Rudeina and
Mrs. Jamila Dannoun, talked about
the women's group activities. They
spoke about their participation in
the inter-cultural women exchange in
Holland, and about their involvement
in the Cultural Tourism Project's
training sessions, workshops and
fieldtrips. They also talked about
the interfaith activities between
Christians and Moslems called "RRCA".
Finally, as part of the summer
school, the women group members were
engaged in two courses; a French
Language and Wall Tapestry courses.
On behalf of
the university and the young
employees groups, Mrs. Samia Shahin
said that these two groups' members
have been jointly engaged in the
meetings twice a week, and have
participated in very interesting
discussion meetings on several
religious and political issues.
Moreover, the RRCA activity has been
revived and become a very important
entity in their meetings. Now they
are also involved in the Cultural
Tourism project's drama training
sessions, workshops and fieldtrips.
As part of the summer school, the
members of these two groups were
engaged in intensive summer training
on inter-cultural and
inter-religious youth exchange
projects regionally and
internationally. However, due to
visa complications, a group to UK
received a setback and their visas
applications were rejected. On the
other hand, two members from these
two groups were elected to lead and
facilitate the groups' discussion
meetings, recruit new members and
organize socio-cultural activities.
For example, the members of these
two groups have organized an Iftar
meal for both the Christian and the
Moslem members. They have also
revived the socio-cultural
activities, i.e. AEI Cinema Tech.
they have recently watched a film
called "Hassan and Marcos" which was
about the Christian-Moslem
relations/ living together in Egypt.
In addition, they had a fieldtrip to
Jericho, in which they had fun as
well as cultural and social
activities.
Finally, There
were two High school students, Milad
Qumsieh and Hanan Hamida (from the
youth management team), who were
very enthusiastic to talk about
their activities as member of the
AEI High School Youth Group. They
said that the summer activities of
were very diverse and rich. First of
all, as part of the summer school,
an American volunteer named David
Grant gave them a one-month course
on Journalism. In addition to that,
six members have been involved in a
project called "Holy Switch". This
group has been able to prepare
2-minute videos on Youtube for the
Holy Switch project sponsored by
ChurchinAction in the Netherlands.
One was about youth life in
Bethlehem; another was about The
Arab Educational Institute, its
groups and activities, and the
recent one was about the daily life
of Jimmy Lama and Jeries Abu-Jaber
from Bethlehem. As a follow-up to
this activity, they made a profile
for the AEI on face-book (a social
utility that connects people
together).
The youth group
members made drawings, wrote stories
and thought about life in Palestine.
Their little stories of hope against
hope are related to daily life under
occupation, in which it is often
extremely difficult to find sources
of hope. These stories and drawings
were collected in a booklet entitled
"Hoping against Hope". Also, they
made a cartoon about their daily
life in Palestine. They wrote the
scenario, created the characters in
black paper, took pictures for the
backgrounds, filmed, recorded their
voices and wrote a song together.
The weekly
discussion meetings have been very
rich and diverse; they talked about
adolescence, enriching summer
vacation, many inter-faith subjects
as part of the "Living in the Holy
Land: Respecting Differences"
project such as, fasting, prayer,
love, tolerance and respect. Most of
the discussion meetings included
ice-breaking games, and were held in
English language in order to improve
the participants' English
communication skills.
Dr. Walid
Mustafa, the coordinator of the
"Living in the Holy Land: Respecting
Differences" project, talked about
the limitation of the funds, which
affected the implementation of the
project at schools. He also
presented the activities, which took
place during the first semester of
the school year, like the teachers
fieldtrip to Nablus and the teachers
and students training sessions at
schools. Furthermore, he introduced
the planned activities of the
project, which will take place until
the end of the school year such as
the general knowledge contests that
will be held in all the involved
schools.
Dr. Toine van
Teeffelen, AEI Development Director,
presented the AEI recent and future
projects. For instance, he talked
about the developments about the
Sumud/ Peace House, the Holy Switch.
Furthermore, he talked about the
House of Stories that will be
established soon at the Sumud/
Peace House, where it will collect
the stories of the people who have
been affected by the construction of
the Wall at Rachel's Tomb area. Mss.
Ranin Al Arja, continued and talked
about the Cultural Tourism Project,
as the Public Relations officer. She
explained that this project seeks to
develop a model cultural tourism
program about the Palestinian
cultural identity and heritage with
a focus on life in the Palestinian
city and countryside of Bethlehem.
It targets international tourists
and local youths. The concept of the
project is to show the different
cultural aspects of Palestinian
society through the concept of Sumud
(Steadfastness, Resilience).
Finally, Mr.
Elias Abu Akleh, AEI Financial
Director, explained the financial
problems AEI faced when the core
funding organization decided not to
renew the contract with us. AEI
worked hard to find another core
funding organization, and now thanks
to God and to the new funder, and
thanks to the AEI development
director who initiates brilliant
proposals that attract funders.
A rich and deep
discussion followed the
presentations. Some members, like
Naela and Aida suggested to send to
the AEI School network the planned
events and activities in order to
strengthen cooperation and more
involvement in these creative,
interesting and useful AEI projects
especially in the fields of youth,
nonviolence, cultural tourism,
intercultural and inter-religious
communication.
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