Palestinian American Community Center 2022August August Newsletter
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August 2022 3Palestinian American Community Center ProgramsPACC Summer Fun
This month, we wrapped up our PACC Summer Fun program! Students took a field trip to Funplex Waterpark where they enjoyed a fun day in the sun with water activities. The Paterson Free Public Library visited our PACC Summer Fun students and provided them with free books from their book mobile! For the last day of the program, students had fun with an obstacle course challenge, a bounce house water slide, and played on our new playground.
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Since the opening of PACC, we have repeatedly had a recommendation to put a playground near PACC so that the kids enrolled in our programs can have some fun outside (especially in the summer). You asked and we delivered. On the last day of our summer program, we launched our new playground and look forward to making great use of it for many years to come! Thank you to Yazeed Ilyan and Saleh Rabee who helped put our playground together.
Homeland Project
After a 2-year hiatus because of the pandemic, we resumed our annual Homeland Project. This year, we did things a little differently by sending our very own staff. Our goal behind this was to build contacts, plan for future trips, foster relationships, refocus our work and improve team morale. We are happy to say that this trip was a success on all fronts. We were able to visit Ramallah, Al-Bireh, Al-Khalil, Bethlehem, Nablus, Akka, Haifa, Jerusalem, Jericho and Battir. We also met with various organizations to better understand the work they do and how we in the diaspora can support them more. Follow our journey on Instagram or Facebook. We have built strong roots and connections in Palestine and are very excited to start our new and improved Homeland Project next summer to further sustain the ties between the Homeland and the diaspora.
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Fellow for Palestine We continued to collect and highlight pictures from our followers who were visiting Palestine this summer. We were able to highlight, Akka, Al-Khalil, Battir and Burqa on our social media accounts. We also took our Facebook and Instagram followers on mini tours of the old city in WeAl-Khalil.areextremely proud to announce that we have officially finalized the Basem and Muna Hishmeh Endowed Student Fellow for Palestine with the Center for Security, Race and Rights (CSSR) at Rutgers University in Newark. This is exciting news for all intellectual, academic, and activist communities who are invested in Palestinian organizing and liberation. We are grateful for both the Basem and Muna Hishmeh Foundation as well as Professor Sahar Aziz from Rutgers University for their enthusiasm and support in this effort. You can read the rest of our announcement here! Community Engagement
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Endowed Student
School Supplies with Jalazone Refugee Camp
Every year we try to engage in one social service activity in Palestine to help our communities in the homeland. This year we worked with Jalazone Refugee Camp and helped support 500 students by purchasing school supplies for them. We were also lucky enough to have some of our staff members present when they were packing the bags who were also able to meet some of the students that would receive the school supplies and book bags.
Community Mapping and Stories
Our team of interns were phone banking this month to gather community stories and geographically ‘map’ our community members so that we can better advocate for resources and make our presence heard.
Social Services
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Palestinian American Community CenterAugust 2022 PACC_USA
