October
Palestinian American Community Center
October Newsletter #SupportTheMission
2021
October 2021
Palestinian American Community Center
If you like anything we are doing,
please donate at paccusa.org/donate Every dollar helps keep us going!
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October 2021
Palestinian American Community Center
Community Engagement Civic Engagement Award from CAIR
The PACC team was honored to receive and accept CAIR’s Civic Learning and Community Engagement Award at their Annual Banquet! The award was given to PACC for our strategic commitment to prioritizing, institutionalizing and advancing civic learning and community engagement at the grassroots level.
Gabrielle Union Community Award from Black Lives Matter Paterson
PACC was surprised with and honored to be awarded BLM Paterson’s Gabrielle Union Community Award for all our solidarity and support of BLM Paterson’s important and empowering grassroots work.
Get Out the Vote Efforts
In light of the NJ General Election on November 2nd, our GOTV team created an informational voter guide booklet in both Arabic and English . We also tabled in various locations to make sure people knew about the upcoming election. People were able to fill out voter pledge cards to get messages and reminders from us about the election!
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October 2021
Palestinian American Community Center
Community Needs Survey We put together a community needs survey to deepen PACC’s understanding of the community and enhance our programs to better serve our community. To date, we have 153 respondents. Our goal is 300. Please help us reach our goal by taking the survey in English or in Arabic. Click here to take the Arabic survey
Click here to take the English survey
Solidarity with Indigenous People’s Day We celebrated Indigenous People’s Day with our community by sending out an email newsletter and posting social media graphics to explain the similar struggles against settler colonialism both our communities face and encourage our community to educate themselves about the Native land we are on today. PACC was also invited to attend and speak at The Racial Justice Project’s Indigenous Peoples Day commemoration at Trinity Church in Asbury Park. We were honored to be in community and talk about the global impact of settler colonialism and the interconnected perspectives of Palestinian and Indigenous Peoples’ histories and solidarity.
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October 2021
Events
Palestinian American Community Center
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Fall Fest
We held another successful and fun filled Fall Fest with 230 attendees. Community members enjoyed a hay and corn stalk maze, pumpkin patch where registrants were able to choose and paint a pumpkin, and refreshments! We also used this event to push our community needs survey and remind people of the upcoming local election and passed out our voter guide booklets.
October 2021
Palestinian American Community Center
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Workshop Wednesday To wrap up our Drug Abuse and Addiction series, we hosted an extremely helpful workshop with Dr. Henry Balzani, an experienced substance abuse and prevention Lecturer, Pharmacist, and Medical Director. The workshop focused on understanding what leads people to points of addiction, and how we can support community members going through rehab or who tend to relapse after rehab. The lively discussion was streamed on Facebook and Youtube with 2,500 total views.
Young Adults Hike In an effort to bring together the young professionals of our community, we coordinated a hike at Ramapo Reservation that 12 people attended. Everyone was able to enjoy being in nature as the season is changing while bonding and making new friendships!
October 2021
Palestinian American Community Center
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Palestine Monday We launched Volume 5, Issue 3 of PACC’s Falastin Magazine, where writers were able to share their contributions with audience members! Our theme for this issue was Family, and pieces focused on how families influence a connection to Palestine and stories about the strength of collectivism in Palestinian culture, both historically and present day. We had 13 people join via zoom and 633 total views on Facebook.
Arabic Sunday Series This month, we held a moderated discussion with Rania Elias, the Director of the Yabous Cultural Centre in Jerusalem, titled An Attack on Jerusalem: An Attack on the Palestinian Identity and Culture. The conversation focused on how Israeli occupation has affected members of the center on a personal, professional and systemic level. We had 30 people join via zoom and 1,000 total views on Facebook.
October 2021
Palestinian American Community Center
Board Of Education Candidate Forum Given the upcoming local election and our center’s commitment to serving the entire city of Clifton, especially the youth of our city, we hosted a debate forum for the candidates running for Clifton’s Board of Education. Community members were able to hear candidates answers on key issues affecting our youths’ education and also asked their own questions. We had about 35 people attend in person, and over 2,000 views via Facebook and Youtube livestream.
Women’s Brunch Our women’s brunch this month was full of fun and an energizing dabka lesson! We had 9 women attend and all were happy to socialize and spend quality time together.
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October 2021
Palestinian American Community Center
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Programs We are proud to have launched our new and improved Fall programming! To date, we have had 192 community members between the ages of 2 and 67 register for our various programs: Arabic for Kids (In Person and Virtual), Arabic Storytime, Homework Help, Computer Class, English Conversation, Tatreez, Science, Dabka for Kids, Women’s Dabka, Men’s Dabka and Parent and Me Dabka
At PACC, we are by the community and for the community and we are committed to continuously improve the quality and delivery of our programs to meet your needs and levels of satisfaction. This year we asked you what we can do differently, and we listened! We now have programs for every age in our community and we are so happy that we can serve you! Each class will be capped at a maximum of around 12 students so that we can ensure quality. We have created alternate schedules for our programs to maximize flexibility Our classes will be focused on age and level to make sure our participants are getting the most benefit
October 2021
Palestinian American Community Center
PACC Family Discount With all this we have started offering a special discount to our PACC family! All we asked was for you to give us the names, ages and contact information of everyone in your household and pay an annual fee of $50 per household! To date, we have 68 families which are made up of 335 individuals who signed up for our PACC Family Discount!
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October 2021 September
Palestinian American Community Center
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