Seems ages ago... First day in London

Tower Hamlets article :)

Nice article about the Hackney evening

http://hackneycitizen.co.uk/2012/07/27/life-child-occupied-palestine-territories-review/

Great to see you!

It was great to see the English kids at the CADFA conference - Many thanks to Latifa and Lorder and later to Mustakim, Shpend and Luna for talking about the visit to the main meeting - Here there's also a picture of the kids' workshop - I hear there are all sorts of good plans to keep in touch and carry on with the work of the project.

Please tell your friends

Please tell your friends about the project - hope they are interested and that some of them might want to be involved in the kids' football visit (which will happen as soon as we can raise the money for it) or the kids' visit next year (assuming we get the money).

If they are interested, please give them this to fill

https://www.dropbox.com/s/uz7mzy4zyakoagc/Buddy%20application%20next%20kids%27%20visit.doc

awww

UK participants, hope to see you there..

Note the postcode is NW5 2JT

Festival in Somers Town

They're still travelling and look at the temperature

We just heard from the Palestinians - remember they left us yesterday early in the morning... and they are still travelling.

"We are now on the Jordanian bridge - Everything is good so far except the heat. It is 47 degrees today"

More Brighton pictures - the place

(some of Nandita's photos)

More Brighton pictures - people

"One of the highlights was visiting Acland Burghley (my school) it was great and I think it went well and I was pretty confident in delivering my speech" Nimmi.

"We went camping with the Palestinians to get to know them, and the drama we did with them was very fun. I met some lovely people with interesting personalities. Going around the city with them was one of my favourite memories the worst time was when I lost my sleeping bag and because I was ill I missed out on a few days. One of the things I found different was that they're Arabic’s is different to Moroccan Arabic. I hope we meet again and stay in touch." -Hossam

"I am now really pleased that I did sign up for this CADFA project because I have had an amazing experience and I've made a lot of new friends. During this project I've learnt a lot of new things, both about the Palestine children’s lives as well as the other Londoners and how we are not so different. They are the same as we are just live in different places, that have different situations. I enjoyed the project 100% i liked mixing and socialising with new and old friends. The best things for me were the school trips and the trip to Brighton, because these were the times we all spent together; both Palestinian and English." -Mustakim

Although the acting classes were extremely tiring in the evenings, they were very enjoyable and everyone got on well. Special thanks to Linda our acting teacher; for helping us to put together our plays which we performed in Somers town.

He never told us he was going to take the picture...Oh well I feel as if I’ve made lifelong friends especially with the British kids. Feel so comfortable around them, they all put a smile on my face and hope we continue to talk and to meet up in the future, they all mean the world to me.- Lorder-Sade

 Showing them around London; we took up the whole upper deck of the bus there was so many of us... Going to miss them all.

Shy much Mustakim?

The amazing view at Brighton from the pier

Travelling home

Thinking of our Palestinian friends travelling home today. If we went to see them, we'd think it was quite far - travel early to the airport, wait for ages, plane for 5 hours, travel to Abu Dis. But our Palestinian friends can't fly directly to Palestine. They have to travel across the 'bridge' between Jordan and Palestine where they have to go through an Israeli border control because it is under Israeli occupation. Their plane will arrive too late for them to be able to go back home straight away, which means a night in a hotel in Amman. And this time, there are likely to be hold-ups... crowds of people going home for Ramadan, and the Israelis putting limitations on the numbers allowed through.... HOPING that they have an easy journey back.

RAIN

Colour groups (home groups)

Just in case you wondered, we didn't divide everyone into boys'/ girls' groups all the time - we also had 'work groups' which ended up with the names FREEDOM, JERUSALEM and TALK

This now seems so long ago... first meeting on the train...

Visit to a Tower Hamlets councillor

Another helper said

'I thought this was a great visit, perhaps one of the best we've done. Things were organised very smoothly. We planned carefully for months and during the time the visitors were here, things were fairly light - we knew what was going to happen when and who was doing what and on the whole it happened easily. It was a very good team, and the activities were good - the preparation in both places, the camp, the London activities, the focus on different places, the handbook, the drama, the film.... A pity about the rain, but it didn't make the young people miserable. They were a really nice group of kids from both places - heart-warming. Yes, I'd do it again.'