If you like anything we are doing, please donate at paccusa.org/donate
Every dollar helps keep us going!
This month PACC participated in the LaunchGood Giving Tuesday Competition to raise funds towards our Palestine Education programs. We were able to raise $8,125 with the support of 180 donors. Thank you to all who donated!
We provided 120 families with $50 meat vouchers from Al-Hilal Meat & Fish Market using a grant of $5,000 from Islamic Relief. Thank you to our partner, Islamic Relief for their continued dedication in serving our community. Thank you, Al-Hilal, for donating some additional amount of vouchers!
We hosted a Clifton Board of Education Candidate forum at PACC for potential candidates running for Clifton Board of Education, we had over 60 people in attendance. The event was live streamed on both Facebook and YouTube.
November 8th was the General Election when voters had the opportunity to vote for local and state officials. We created a General Election booklet with voting resources that can help our community members throughout the election. We also had 3 volunteers make calls to remind our community members to vote in the upcoming election.
We had the opportunity to table at the Boys and Girls Club Community Resource Expo alongside other organizations. We were able to pass out information about the upcoming election and tell community members about the work we do at PACC.
Our ACE team had their second meeting this month, where our NNAAC Fellow, Yousef Ziyadi, led the youth in a conversation about the history and present-day efforts of Arab American advocacy in the U.S. We ended with a motivating look at the various ways we can situate Palestine in this advocacy.
PACC was invited to the Annual United Holy Land Fund Banquet where we had the opportunity to have a table where we sold our PACC Merch to attendees and also passed out information about PACC.
We connected one of our community members with the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice to represent Palestinian and Arab voices in their Citizenship For All campaign in Washington D.C. We are very proud of our community for advocating for such important issues for all identities!
We have reached the halfway point of our Fall 2022 session! Parents were given the opportunity to fill out a mid-program survey for all of our programs and their responses showed that they are extremely happy with how the programs are running so far. Our Program Coordinator has also been attending the various programs we offer and evaluating the instructors’ teaching methods, talking to the students and parents about their satisfaction and improvement levels, and assessing what is working and what is not working in all of the classes as a whole. These mid-program surveys and evaluations help staff and employees ensure that our programs are running smoothly and that we are continuously improving as a center.
We hosted a “Know your Rights” Workshop in collaboration with Wafa House and the New Jersey Department of Labor. We had 19 people attending in-person and 2 online on zoom. Participants were able to learn more about their rights as an employee of a company and how they can protect themselves within the workplace. They also learned about disability insurance, family leave insurance, and more.
We hosted a Self-Defense and Bullying workshop with Elite Child Development where we had over 27 people in attendance. Participants were able to learn more about the different types of bullying and self-defense moves to protect themselves.
This month, we hosted a virtual conversation with two members from the Red Nation, Kiley Guy and Demetrius Johnson, as we discussed the parallels of Palestinian indigeneity and indigeneity in the settler US. We had 45 people in attendance over zoom and over 270 views on Facebook.
Continuing our theme of indigeneity, we hosted Haneen Zoabi for a conversation about the lived realities and experiences of Palestinian citizens in the 1948 occupied territories, now known as “Israel”. We ended the generative conversation with a discussion on the true meaning of decolonization in Palestine. We had 14 people join over zoom and 950 views on Facebook.
This month we continued to focus on mental health! We had over 25 women enjoy a workshop on mental health with Ahlam Mohammed from Smile. Participants had the opportunity to learn about different coping methods.
PACC led a virtual tatreez workshop at Ohio State University. They had 40 people in attendance and our tatreez teacher, Wafa Ayyad, walked them through the basic tatreez knots and guided them through a basic tatreez pattern. If you would like to request a workshop for your university or organization, please click here.
In our annual efforts to debunk the myth of Thanksgiving, we posted on our social media platforms and sent an email to our mailing list that included a graphics of solidarity between Indigenous and Palestinian communities and a tool for our community to engage in to find the names of the Native lands we are currently living on.
November 29th marks the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people. Although nowhere near enough to rectify the violent effects of that day, we use the day to celebrate the beautiful solidarity that has emerged by countless groups, communities, and identities that have also fallen victim to colonialism, imperialism, racism, state-sanctioned violence, control of movement and borders. We created a video with community members and local SJP students talking about why they stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
