Dear Friends of the Hope Flowers School,

Warm greetings to you all. As the year comes to an end, we wish to send our warmest greetings and appreciation to all of you, our friends. The first half of this school year that started on September 1^st was a good success for us at the school, in spite of the hard situation we live in.

In this newsletter we want to let you know about our activities, and the progress that we managed to achieve during 2003.  

Educational Progress:

We have started this school year with an increase in the new enrollments at Hope Flowers. Despite the problems of the blockade on the school's main road, the parents continued in their encouragement and support for our work, this being expressed in an increase in new registrations for this year. We now have a total number of 130 students from kindergarten up to grade 6.

 In addition, we managed to upgrade our curriculum for this year by expanding the French Language Instruction program to be taught for the second grade after it started with the First grade last year.  We have a plan to expand the French language instruction program to be taught for the third grade next school year, and so on.

 New Computer Lab:

As part of our plan to upgrade and increase the quality of the education, we succeeded in establishing a new computer lab at the school, which we started to use at the beginning of this school year. This computer lab was used by the students to learn and upgrade their computer skills. In addition, the computer lab will have a major role in the education for peace at Hope Flowers. Students and teachers will be using the computer lab to communicate with Israeli students and other students around the world, for the purpose of building bridges of tolerance and intercultural understanding. These international communications through the computer lab will start once we complete the work, and have the internet accessibility completely done.

 The total budget for this lab is $31,625. Thus far, we have received $18,900 for the project. Therefore, the school is still in need for $12,725.

 We are thankful for those who donated with their money and efforts towards making the lab possible. It is such a benefit to the students and for the local community, especially since there will be computer training courses to be given; and also a chance for the women in El-Khader village, especially those who have no education or income or resources, to learn basic computer skills that will help them in finding job opportunities like office or secretarial work that will help them to earn living.

 Psychological Support program

Since the beginning of this school year, we have been working with a psychologist and three social workers who are running a psychological support program.  This program brings parents, staff, and the children together to handle the problems, fears and emotional distresses that came out of the hard and unstable situation we have been living in the last three years. This hard situation left lots of children and even adults in a difficult psychological situation, the stress badly affecting their behaviors and reactions.

 The Hope Flowers School recognized the urgent need for psychological support last year and started a pilot psychological support and therapy program on its own initiative, without support from anyone. The program started with five children – the ones most affected – their parents, and a group of 12 mothers (some of whom are from the school's neighborhood). After two months, the psychological support program included more than 12 children and almost 20 mothers. In October of this year, we were very surprised to see the program started again with almost 50 mothers and much more openness from the children.

 The main purposes of this program are to protect the children, to assist them to overcome their stress, and to teach them how they can change the behaviors that result from fears and stress. This is achieved through building a relationship based on professional advising for the students and their parents on the one side, and from specialized staff on the other.

 We see that there is a sincere need for psychological support for the children and the community in El-Khader village. Therefore, we want to expand the psychological support to the community, to include a larger number from El-Khader and the other surrounding villages. We are looking to have this program start at the beginning of 2004. Your support and contribution for this project will be highly appreciated. More details about this program and other budget manners are available upon your request.

 The Compassionate Listening Training Seminar, May 2003.  This seminar resulted from cooperation between the Hope Flowers School and the Compassionate Listening Project in the USA. A total of 23 Palestinians participated in the seminar, which lasted from May 9^th to 11^th. The participants had different backgrounds; some of them were University students, others were social workers, lawyers, teachers and people working in other fields. The purpose of this training seminar was to use compassionate listening as a way of reconciliation and conflict resolution.

 A certificate from Hope Flowers and the Compassionate Listening Project was given at the end of the training for each participant.

 It was a successful seminar and the evaluation of the participants and trainers gave us more motivation to organize future seminars in this domain.

 Advanced training in compassionate Listening: Two staff members of the Hope Flowers also participated in the advanced training with Israelis in Jerusalem, between the 11^th and 13^th of  May.

 The Empowerment Training, July 2003: We also succeeded in organizing an empowerment training program from the first to the fourth of July, 2003, for a total number of 15 participants from different fields and backgrounds. The training was cooperation between the Hope Flowers School and the Foundation of Personal Leadership in Holland. Two professional Dutch trainers gave the training, which was a successful one. The purpose of this training was to help people to overcome the feeling of being powerless, which have become common among both Israelis and Palestinians since the Intifada re-started. This feeling of powerlessness resulted mainly in an attitude of aggression and verbal violence from both sides. It was then that the idea of an Empowerment program for Palestinians came up. We think both Israelis and Palestinians need empowerment, but maybe the Palestinians, being the more oppressed party, are more aware of this. Anyway, the decision was made to give that priority, also because of the kind of work and philosophy the Hope Flowers School has.

 Peace is needed more than ever. We are working to assist people in gaining more self-inquiry, collaborative communication, compassionate listening, empowerment training and skills, compassionate encounters with suffering, and other conflict resolution skills. This is the main motivation for organizing these compassionate listening and empowerment trainings seminars.

 The visit of the US Counsel – General;

We were honored by the visit of Mr. Jeffery Feltman, the latest Counsel General and Mr. David Pearce, the new Counsel General and Christopher Stevens, the Political Section Chief on Monday Dec 8^th. 

The visit of Mr. Feltman was the last one for this year as he is leaving his office. We had the honor to meet with the new Counsel General and to follow up the contacts with the US consulate-General in Jerusalem. And here we would thank Mr. Feltman and the US Consulate in Jerusalem for all of their support in reopening the road of the school.

 The "Hope Summer Camp" at the Hope Flowers School, August 2003:

The Hope Flowers School organized a summer camp for 30 kids from the school and from the surrounding villages. The summer camp was held at Hope Flowers from August 1^st – 31^st. It included lots of education and activities for the children in the fields of drama, theater, photography, folk dancing and handicrafts. Three Scottish volunteers contributed with their skills and efforts to teach drama and the photography. Palestinian teachers took the initiative to teach the folk dancing and handicrafts to the whole summer camp.

 The summer camp ended on August 31^st in a celebration attended by the mayor of El-Khader, representatives from the Department of Education, two Dutch friends, and the parents of the kids.  A Handicraft exhibition was organized in addition to Dabka show and a show for Peter Pan play, and a show for the video films were made and documented by the kids during the summer camp.

 The Partnership between the Hope Flowers and Friedrichsgymnasium School in Frankfurt Oder;

 Within the framework of the partnership between the Hope Flowers School and Freidrichsgymnasium School in Frankfurt (Oder) in Germany, a group of 12 persons included students; teachers and parents from the Hope Flowers visited Friedrichsgymnasium School from Sept 13-20, 2003. Lots of activities were organized between the Hope Flowers group and their German partners like sports, arts, Handicraft and joint workshops concerned with the democratic education.

 The purpose of such a meeting is to continue our joint work and efforts in peace and democratic education. We believe that cross cultural activities and working together can be an important contribution to a peaceful and open coexistence.

 And here we would point out that this partnership with Friedrichsgymnasium School started in 1999 and since that time a number of exchanges and joint meetings were carried on in both schools.

 We are thankful to our German friends for their support and kind hospitality.

 International Events; IDEC 2003 in the USA:

Two staff members from the Hope Flowers participated in the IDEC – International Democratic Educational Conference – that was held in July 2003 in New York. Ibrahim Issa, co-director of the school, and Marwan Darwish, the French language teacher, represented the school in the IDEC and expanded their knowledge and experience about the principles of democratic education.

 The above two staff members shared their experience through the IDEC with the other teachers at Hope Flowers.

 The Hope Flowers Promotional Tour in the USA, Oct-Nov 2003

Our USA tour took place from October 30^th to Nov 26^th, 2003. Ibrahim Issa, the Co-Director of Hope Flowers represented the school in this tour  in the USA and gave presentations about the school's work in California, New York, North Carolina, Texas and Washington D.C. 

 As we are seeking to spread the message of Palestinian peace-building in different countries, we wanted to share our vision and our experience, and to promote the unique work of the Hope Flowers School. In order to continue our work, it is urgent that we broaden our base of financial support. The disastrous economic situation has created massive unemployment and a humanitarian crisis. Few Palestinian families are able to pay school tuition. As a private school without specific religious or secular backing, we believe that we need to expand our contacts and build new partnerships with organizations and groups. An ultimate goal of this tour would be to establish a network of people and organization called "Friends of Hope Flowers School," so that we can further benefit the school with joint activities.

 We welcome your interest in joining this network and supporting our work. Please send us a note if you want to join this network so that we add you to a special mailing list. The goal of this network of people and organizations will be to support the Hope Flowers School in peace education and further benefit the school with joint activities, expanding the school's contacts and partnerships worldwide and for the financial support to keep the continuity of the school.

 We are thankful for our hosts in the USA for their assistance in making this tour a reality. Specifically in assisting us to make a wide variety of venues for public and connections with key donor organizations and individuals, and lodging during the stay in the USA.

 New Website and E-mails,

Due to the recent problems in our internet server, we had to do some changes for the Hope Flowers web page. The new website is www.hope-flowers.org and the new e-mail addresses are   and

You can write to Ibrahim Issa, Co-director at:   

 Financial Situation at the Hope Flowers:

As you may already know, the financial burden on the school has increased since the Intifada started three years ago. Most of our students' parents depend on work inside Israel for their income, and since the closures were imposed on Palestinian cities by Israel, they could not reach their work places any more. Therefore, a great number of our students stopped paying their school tuitions because of their families' hard financial situation. As a result, the school had to increase the number of scholarships it gives to students to keep the enrollment up at the school, and not to have them leaving their education because of financial problems. Through the school's years of functioning, Hope Flowers used to depend mainly on the students tuitions for its income. Since this income had drastically decreased, the school has started to seek the assistance of its friends to support the overcoming of this hard situation.

Ways to support, We will be grateful for your support, which will be used to meet the immediate needs of the school, as well as contributing to projects such as: any of the school's self-support projects, (copies of which are available upon request), scholarships, and supporting the staff salaries, or supporting other programs like the psychological support program, or Israeli-Palestinian workshops. Donations could be sent directly to the school's address (registered mail) to:

The Hope Flowers School, Bethlehem, P.O.Box 732, West Bank. Via Israel

Or to the school's bank account, Donors from the USA could send their contributions to the following address:

Chase Manhattan Bank - New York, A/C Arab Jordan Investment Bank, Amman - Jordan Chips ID 136008, SWIFT AJIBJOAX , A/C Palestine Investment Bank For Further Credit of "the Hope Flowers School", A/C NO. 73535, Bethlehem Branch 76-411, Palestine

Donors from Europe could send their contributions to the following address: Deutsche Bank Ag, Frankfurt – Germany, A/C Arab Jordan Investment Bank, Amman - Jordan Chips ID 136008, SWIFT AJIBJOAX , A/C Palestine Investment Bank, For Further Credit of "the Hope Flowers School", A/C NO. 73535, Bethlehem Branch 76-411, Palestine

For Donors from the United States, donations could be sent to the Orange County Peace Fund for tax deduction purposes to the following address: "Orange County Middle East Peace Fund , P.O. Box 5891 Orange California 92863 - 5891 USA"

We will be glad to provide you with any further information you need to know.

Many thanks for your consideration of our work and for all your efforts for peace education.

In this season, we wish you the happiest of Holidays and every happiness in the New Year.