Feminist Peace Network

Received via e-mail from Nabila Espanioly, Center Director For the Al-Tufula Center in Nazareth, Israel:

Dear friends and partners,
I am pleased to share with you our new Newsletter, which we hope will be a tool to share with you our challenges and achievements, our projects and ideas, success stories and events. We aim at disseminating this newsletter twice a year.

As we could not cover all our projects in the present issue, we decided to highlight some of our women empowerment projects. In this newsletter we are sharing with you our main strategies and commitments. That is, we are committed to the most marginalized within our community. This includes our work with women and children in the newly recognized villages (Arab Bedouin villages in the North), our work with Palestinian women with special needs in Israel, and our work with young women from deprived families.
We advocate in front of the government as we do in the case of the children from Hussiniya, who were deprived from transportation to and from their schools. In the same way we will advocate in front of the Ministry of Education once our Research on “Sexism in School Books” has been finalized. We advocate in front of our community as we do in case of women with special needs. We advocate in front of international institutions as we did with the Palestinian Women Status Network on providing a shadow report to the United Nations on the status of Palestinian women in Israel (CEDAW.) We challenge existing patriarchal values as we do at our re-launched Muntada May Ziada Forum. We struggle to contribute to social change by giving a voice to the voiceless in the narrative of the women with special needs. And we struggle against the absence of women from the public sphere through the Women’s Capacity Index, which also celebrates Palestinian women’s achievements.
We create spaces for women through the new “Steps-Gallery” at our center and forums and by having an open door policy for the community. I hope you enjoy reading this issue and learn more about Al-Tufula center.
Nabila Espanioly
Center Director

Excerpted from the newsletter:

Al-Tufula’s Empowerment Project Contributes to Social Change

The Nazareth Nurseries Institute (NNI) is a nonfor-profit organization initiated by a group of Palestinian women citizens of Israel. The NNI constitutes two entities – The Nazareth Nursery established in 1984 and Al-Tufula Center established in 1989. Our vision is to further and encourage the development of a democratic and civil society that pro- vides equal opportunities for all its members building upon its own capacities.

At the NNI we target our work to two major groups that play a crucial role in achieving social change: children and women. We took this strategic decision based on the fact that there is a lack of capacity development and support in these two fields and the need to breach existing gaps in our society, by providing better/adequate/fair conditions for our children and women for generations to come. In view of that our goals are:

• To develop Early Childhood Care and Development in the Palestinian society in Israel.
• To empower Palestinian women by developing their capacities and supporting them in a changing society.

The Newsletter also had this wonderful report about their celebration of International Women’s Day:

This year at Al-Tufula Center we had two major events to mark the International Women’s Day. A demonstration in Nazareth with Arab and Jewish organizations from all over the country and a special artistic event. Al-Tufula Center and Amnesty International-Israel Section, prepared a very special and unique celebration commemorating the International Women’s Day on March 8th at the Cultural Center of the Municipality in Nazareth. Through the event we sent a strong message affirming that Women’s Rights are Human Rights. In this day of struggle we took the opportunity to give our greetings to women all over the world. More than 200 people participated in this successful event.

During the event we celebrated four local women artists, who are starting their artistic careers. Exhibited four art works with a woman vision and perspective: Mariana Said, Mary Farah, Yola Nassar Helou, and Huda Zoubi (Palestinian woman with special needs painting with her mouth and feet). 2000 postcards of the artworks were distributed in an attempt to raise awareness regarding the important message of the International Women’s Day and to promote the work of local women artists among the community. The event was accompanied by the musical talent of Salam Abo Amni, local singer and Oud player. With fascinating songs of dedication and excerpts from traditional Palestinian wedding music. Participants enjoyed this unique artistic event.

The anchorwoman of the event, Ms. Mona Daher from Al-Tufula Center, presented excerpts of Palestinian poetry emphasizing the importance of changing balance of power between women and men and refusing the existing division between personal and public spheres. The celebration included a welcome speech by Ms. Samira Darawshi, Chairperson of Al-Tufula Center. Ms. Rawia Loucia-Shammas, Al-Tufula Coordinator of Women Projects and Ms. Honeida Assaf from Amnesty International who talked about women’s rights in international law.
At the end of the event, all women participated in singing traditional songs with new wording written about women’s rights. The outreach of this event was exceptional
and the feedback from
participants was very positive. The event was widely covered by the local press.

To learn more, visit their website. At present it is in Arabic, but it appears that an English version is in progress. You can also email them at altufula @ rannet.com.

Filed under: Uncategorized, Sheroes, International Women's Day