Jason Ajiake is our new Advocacy and Community Outreach coordinator. Jason is a seasoned organizer working to build grassroots political power with PACC as our Advocacy and Community Outreach Coordinator. He attended Howard University in Washington, DC where he studied Sociology and Political Science with a focus on liberation. In his spare time, Jason is passionate about music and meditation.
Munna Aldakhlallah is our new USCPR Fellow and our advocacy and office intern. She is passionate about Palestinian Liberation and empowering the Arab-American community. Munna attended Rutgers University in Newark, NJ where she majored in Business Administration with a minor in Sociology. Munna’s hobbies include gardening, reading, and cooking.
We renovated the center and gave it a new look with a fresh paint job and a remodeling of all our bathrooms. Book your event with PACC today and visit our website at paccusa.org/ rentals to see how the center looks now and our rental pricing.
We brought back our programs for the winter session after taking a short break! We are off to a great start this session and have over 230 participants ranging between the ages of three and 60 years old. We are offering our usual programs: Dabka, Arabic, Cooking Club, English Conversation, Basketball, and Soccer.
Our cooking class has been the most popular program so far this session with close to 40 kids registered. We started offering 4 different cooking class times to accommodate the large number of registrants.
We have resumed two of our Palestine Education courses: Holding Onto Palestinian Existence (HOPE), which is for High School students, and Freedom is the Future (FIF), which is open to anyone over the age of 17. Both are 10-week virtual courses that educate our community members and people across the nation on Palestinian history, culture, and larger social justice issues. We have 22 people enrolled in FIF and 15 people enrolled in HOPE.
We hosted our 5th ACE meeting where we discussed grassroots organizing tactics and the difference between being an organizer and an activist. We also invited Tarek Alnatur to coach our cohort on leadership. By going over their result from a DISC analysis, we empowered each of them to use their strengths to be leaders and navigate team dynamics.
This month we were able to host two women’s brunches for our community members. Our first brunch focused on the importance of healthy eating and nutrition with Aya Mustafa. We had over 10 women in attendance. Our second brunch for the month of January focused on Women’s Health and had a total of 20 women in attendance. Dr. Naglaa Rizk, a local gynecologist, spoke about the importance of maintaining your physical health while Ahlam Mohammed, a social worker from SMILE, focused on the importance of mental health.
In collaboration with the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR), we were able to host a virtual conversation that gave an overview of Palestine in 2022 and helped us plan and envision advocacy in 2023. We had over 14 people online on zoom and 247 views on Facebook. You can watch the event here.
We were able to host a self-care and empowerment workshop for new moms with counselors Mena and Rajaa from WAFA House, doula Afshan Abbasi from Doula & Ivy Care and speech pathologists Ala Hassan, Shafeeka Farsakh, and Amani Marie from The Therapy Corner. Mothers were able to listen to brief presentations about different aspects of motherhood and how to navigate certain obstacles that come with being a mother. We also provided a short massage and dinner for all new moms who attended! We had over 32 mothers attend in person and 11 attend virtually on zoom.
We honored Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for being an inspirational change agent in the Civil Rights Movement. Our goal was to challenge the dominant narrative that MLK Jr. supports Zionism and Israel, which has been weaponized by Israeli lobby groups to gain support for their settler-colonial expansion.
On January 26th, Israeli occupation forces raided the Jenin Refugee Camp and massacred over 9 Palestinians in one night. We released a statement about the massacre to remind our community that it is our duty and responsibility now more than ever to educate, advocate for, and uplift Palestinian existence, resistance, and self-determination Click here to check out our statement on Facebook.
This month we welcomed the wildflower homeschool collective for their Discovery Day at PACC! We had 45 students between the ages of 3 to 17 join us for an interactive day of learning how to cook, learning Dabka, Tatreez, Arabic Storytime, and Palestine Education. Students left the discovery day feeling refreshed with new knowledge about Palestine! Check out our photo album from the event here.
As a way to get the young adults in our community members together, we coordinated a social outing for young adults to the Brighton Asylum Escape room! We had over 22 young adults join us for a fun night.
