Teaching of French
The fifth session of the year (73 students) has ended up in early December. To date, there are a total of about fifty students enrolled for the first session of 2012.
On the whole, we have counted 253 registrations in the course of 2011.
Cultural Activities
Two exhibitions have been showed in these past two months, thanks to the French Cultural Centers network:
The Animal Farm, oil paintings of the Gaza artist Mohammad Hawajri.
Other Worlds, works of arts of Jordanian, French and Palestinian artists, brought together by the artist Nicole Pfund. .
The 10th of December, a recital of Palestinian and Swedish poetry took place at the association. Ann Hallström and Ida Börjel, Dalia Taha and Hala Shrouf accompanied with the guitar player Shadi Zaqtan, have each introduced and read their text, in two languages in front of an audience of about fifty persons.
The female poets who came to the recital participate to Bagdad Café, a project supported by the Swedish Institute that aims at promoting exchanges between poets from both countries and organizes translation workshops.
Activities for children
The manual activities for children have been suspended during the months of November and December because of renovation works in the Old City premises and because of a training held there. The Tamer Institute has notably funded the redoing of the large room that will, from now on, become the library that has reported 721 loans in December and 513 visits.
The toy library has welcomed 86 children during this period and the pedagogical garden 234.
Social Aid
Over the past two months, 95 persons have been received by the female social workers, including 8 persons for health problems, 3 for psychological problems, 47 for economical issues and 37 for diverse issues (family, school failure and so on).
Two families sponsored by the AFPS through the association Inash El Usra have received visits from the social workers.
Training of trainers
The International Institute for Human Rights and Peace (2idhp) and the AECHF have organized a training course from Tuesday 6th December to Thursday 8th December in Hebron. This training, supported by the Provence Alpes-Côte D’Azur region aimed at allowing the participants to tackle the issue of human rights related to young people and children. This training took place in the Old City Association premises.
It has been provided by Ms. Laura Dewitte, a European renowned trainer, who participated to the drafting of the COMPASS and COMPASSITO, non formal educative tools created by the Council of Europe.
AECHF female coordinators, civil servants from the Ministry of Law, Al Quds University and from the Hebron prefecture, employees from the Hebron Municipality and from the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee (26 persons in total) participated to this three-days training. Besides, four specialized youth workers from Basse-Normandie Region also took part in the training.
These few days spent in Hebron provided an opportunity to start preparing the 4Th edition of the International Pleading Competition of Palestine that will take place Sunday 7th October 2012 at Al-Quds University.
Delegations hosting
The 26th of November, the Association has welcomed in the Old City premises, Ms Seham Barghouti, Ministry of Culture, Mr. Derek Elias, Head of Mission of the UNESCO in Ramallah, Mr Maxwell Gaylard, Deputy Special Coordinator and United Nations Resident, and Humanitarian Coordinator (UNSCO), Mr. Suheil Khoury, Director of the Edward Said Conservatory. During this meeting, the project of opening a branch of the Conservatory in Hebron has been discussed. At present, music courses take place once a week in our premises.
Alternative Tourism
Throughout the months of November and December, we have welcomed and showed 143 visitors around, individual or in groups, and we have put 47 persons up in Palestinian families.
Over the year, we reach the number of 1202 visitors and 289 persons who spent one or more nights in Palestinian families.
Given the success of our program, a new training of accompanying guides will start at the beginning of January and we wish we can make discover new sites to the visitors.
The 4th of December, the AECHF participated to the Christmas Market that took place at the French Cultural Center in Jerusalem. Numerous expatriate persons bought local handicrafts and acquainted themselves with our tourist and stay program.
Project Awareness Raising to Heritage and Environment funded by the European Union.
This project has been carried out well until the 31th of December. It has had an impact on 630 children, 45 teachers and 7 youth workers. It may continue in 2012 since the CCFD has committed itself to fund new workshops and field visits for 500 children.
The AECHF wishes you a positive, happy and free new year 2012!
