GlobalGiving.org: Beam of Light: Ramadan Soccer Tournament in Rafah

Matching Grant starts in just a few hours!

Donna Baranski-Walker — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 15:29:09 GMT

Al Aqaba schoolchildren with their origami

Thank you so much for your past support of Rebuilding Alliance's workl We've used every dollar donated to remarkable results. I ask for your help once again.

In just a few hours time, GlobalGiving will match by 30% every dollar donated, up to $1000. They have $100,000 to give away in just 24hrs on Wednesday Oct. 19th, Eastern Time.

We need your help to rebuild Palestinian homes, schools, playgrounds, libraries. Please go to www.RebuildingAlliance.org and click Donate Now. This time we are focusing on "Rebuilding to Remain" in the West Bank's Area C. We start there -- I promise, I'll do my best to bring it to Gaza too.

Please donate as early in the day as you can, before the funds run out.

Questions, suggestions? Please call me at 650-325-4663.

P.S. Your donation, large or small, really matters. GlobalGiving is providing a grant to the project with the most donors, and also a grant to the project that raises the most donations. We can do it... last time Rebuilding Alliance came in second. This time, help us to win!

P.P.S. One of our earlier GG Match projects helped create housing for teachers in Al Aqaba village. Here are photos of the Japanese teacher who came this past Sunday to give the children an overview of Japan!

Sushi in Al Aqaba! Teacher Yuhki Ohnogi from Japan

Links:

Our latest video, Rebuilding to Remain

Bringing Gaza youth together to play ball

Donna Baranski-Walker — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 17:07:10 GMT

Dear Donors,

Yesterday morning I had the chance to speak with Khaled Nasrallah, co-founder of the Rachel Corrie Sports Initiative (RCSI). He informed me that all fencing behind the goals on the Unity Club Soccer Field has been completed.

When I asked if there were any other opportunities to use the money raised through Beams of Light, he explained that RCSI will now be hosting the Rachel Corrie Soccer Tournament on a different soccer field every year. This year it will be held at the Rafah refugee camp called “Block O.” More than half of the homes in “Block O” were demolished from 2000 to 2005 because it was right next to the Israeli Army’s guard tower and a major gate called the Falahadin Gate.

The community finds recovery through soccer! Khaled explained that people, especially the young, gather in a café in camp, near a makeshift field to watch the European soccer games. The café though isn’t like a Starbucks, though. It is made from the rubble of demolished homes. Then they go out to play soccer themselves. He promises to send pictures.

Khaled said it was really important to give families of this neighbor a safe place to play. He felt there are several opportunities that are a close match for this project:

Provide play equipment for the playground next to the soccer field; or
Resurface and level the soccer field, making it softer and safer for tournament play

I asked RCSI to email Rebuilding Alliance a plan and a budget for one of these projects, which I will present it to the Rebuilding Alliance Board of Directors. Once we have his proposal, we will modify the Beams of Light: Ramadan Soccer Tournament in Rafah project.

I want to thank you again for all of your help. You have supported infrastructure for an amazing initiative that has brought the youth of Gaza together to play ball! I look forward to being in touch soon.

Sincerely,
Donna Baranski-Walker
Founder and Executive Director

P.S. Just to recap, we accomplished many things above and beyond the original goals of this grant:

Through a separate grant, we installed a portable office building at the Unity Club Soccer Field as the first step in creating a community center. We used a portion of the funds that you donated to pay for a generator delivered with the portable building, as a generator was cited in our original quote for lighting;
We used your grant to level the playing field – literally!—and installed lighting for the walkway to the field; and
When the Unity Club requested fencing behind the goals (to keep the ball from bouncing into the tunnel area), instead of lighting for night-games, we explained their request to you and forwarded our grant to meet their goal (please see last report to explain why we agreed to fencing instead of lighting).

In the process, Rebuilding Alliance collected hundreds of gently worn soccer shoes and uniforms, learning a lot about the full dimensions of the blockade in the process. We also help the Rachel Corrie Sports Initiative install a playground at the Unity Club Soccer Field, and spent countless hours working through the details of project development. When those who knew Rachel Corrie decided to clear the rubble of their demolished

A change in course

Donna Baranski — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 22:53:01 GMT

Metal Net already installed behind one goal

Greetings everyone!

I bring you big news concerning Beam of Light project at the Unity Youth Field Soccer field. As always, I would like to thank you for your generous donations that have made this project possible. I am writing to update you on the current status of the project and a necessary change in course for the initiative.

Through your support, our initiative, Beam of Light: Ramadan Soccer Tournament in Rafah, has already installed a generator along with a temporary field office at the soccer field, lights along the walkway to the field, and sand to level the field. In addition to your and the Rebuilding Alliance’s efforts, the Rachel Corrie Sports Initiative (RCSI) was able to add a children’s beach play field next to the main soccer field and a metal net behind one of the goals on the soccer field (see photos).

We recently received an important request from the RCSI board and residents in the Yebnah community. They asked us to change the plans to add lights for night games. The Israeli Army has not stopped bombing the tunnel area along the border with Egypt. I am attaching a recent Oxfam report on the situation in Gaza to provide more information.

Our soccer field is also along the border strip, not far from the tunnels. The parents want their children home at night, as far away from the tunnel area as possible. So instead of lights for night games, they proposed using the funds to install a metal net behind the other goal and provided a budget accordingly. These metal nets will keep the ball and the young people away from the tunnel area.

The Rebuilding Alliance earnestly agrees with this request and has transferred $3,170 to our fiscal partner, Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, accordingly. We’ll update the project description accordingly. Feel free to add you comment and questions by clicking on the comment button below. Also, you can contact me at the Rebuilding Alliance via phone at (650) 325-4663 or by email at contact@rebuildingalliance.org.

As always, your support for this project means you stand with this determined group who clears the field from debris and gives young people, and the community, a place to recover and play! We at the Rebuilding Alliance whole heartily thank you for your whole heartedness.

Sincerely,

Donna Baranski-Walker
Founder and Executive Director of the Rebuilding Alliance,

This huge net keeps ball away from tunnels

The other goal needs a net too!

Young people play soccer every day

Attachments:

Lights En Route

Penina Eilberg-Schwartz — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 17:30:59 GMT

Unity Club Soccer Field

Dear Friends, We have just sent your most recent generous donations to our partners in Gaza. If all goes well, new lights will be installed before the end of Ramadan on September 9th, and before the end of the Rachel Corrie Ramadan Soccer Tournament. We will keep you updated!

Below is a photograph of Rebuilding Alliance volunteer Kate Gould with UNRWA social worker Khaled Nasrallah, standing in front of the Unity Club soccer field. In the background, you can see the portable unit the Rebuilding Alliance helped build to launch the Yebna Charitable Society community center.

Even with the new additions of lights, the field will not be fully lit, so there will be more work to do before the next Ramadan, and the next Rachel Corrie Ramadan Soccer tournament!

Thanks for all your support, and stay in touch!

Ramadan in Gaza, after the Flotilla Tragedy

Penina Eilberg-Schwartz — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 23:25:51 GMT

Dear Donors, The past weeks have been both tragic and remarkable ones. The attack on the flotilla shocked, angered, and saddened people all over the world. The Rebuilding Alliance sent materials on one boat in the flotilla, the MV Rachel Corrie, as part of our More Than Chocolates for Gaza campaign. We are working hard pressure the U.S. government to assure delivery of those materials.

Meanwhile, the people of Gaza wait for the blockade to be lifted.

There are things we can do to bring hope in the meantime. We can bring light.

Ramadan is coming again, and early. During Ramadan, people come outside to be with one another and celebrate at night, after the fast is over for the day. With your help, we have furnished the soccer field in Rafah with some lights for playing at night, but not enough yet. The field needs more light! Keep up the good work and the much appreciated donations.

In Memory of Rachel Corrie, a Matching Grant

Donna Baranski — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:29:35 GMT

In Memory of Rachel Corrie

Dear Donors, Thanks for the help and support you’ve given to our Beam of Light: Ramadan Soccer Tournament in Rafah! Through your help, lights have been installed along the walkway, allowing for safer passage in the evening or night. Additionally, we were able to install the transformer for the lights spec’ed in our project. You may remember that this project is being organized by the Rachel Corrie Sports Initiative in Gaza. These are the families who knew Rachel when she lived in Gaza and they pursue her commitment to nonviolence and community in her memory. I want to take this opportunity to tell you that Cindy and Craig Corrie (Rachel’s parents) have asked people around the world to participate in an international day of conscience in her memory. As it happens, on that very day, Tuesday, GlobalGiving will match your donation at 30%, up to $1,000 per donor, for all donations received from 12:01am tonight, eastern standard time until 11:59pm Tuesday, eastern time. Our Beam of Light project has raised $4744 so far with $ 6587 still needed to meet the $11,331 goal to install all the lights for the field. Please give on Tuesday to make this dream come true. Sincerely, Donna P.S. In memory of Rachel and her dreams, we would like to send you a very special gift when you make a donation. A few months after Rachel was killed, hundreds of people joined her mother in Olympia Washington, to walk in her memory in the "Procession of the Species" - all wearing dove costumes (- Rachel had been a key volunteer for this gentle parade, designing and making dove costumes). When you donate for the "Beam of Light: Ramadan Soccer Tournament in Rafah" project, we will email you a certificate of thanks, along with detailed instructions describing how you can make a dove costume in Rachel's memory, developed by Olympia artist candio. and including photos of Rachel and the many adults and children walking as doves in her memory in Olympia's Procession of the Species.

Links:

Please Tell Your Friends - Share this Link

Lights for Gaza Soccer -- please give today for GlobalGiving Matching Grant

Donna Baranski-Walker — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:45:01 GMT

Rachel Corrie Ramadan Soccer tournament

Dear All who have supported our Beam of Light Soccer Intiative,

Today is the final day for GlobalGiving’s Give More Get More challenge. Please take a moment to make a donation to help complete our funding for the Beam of Light Soccer project.

From now until 11:59 Eastern Time, EVERY DONATION IS BEING MATCHED by GlobalGiving.com Please give now at http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/lights-for-ramadan-soccer-tournament/

This project has been a small miracle in a time of great hardship and despair in Gaza. Your donation really mattered. When your gift was augmented by a small grant from a family foundation, amazingly, despite the blockade, the Rebuilding Alliance was able to successfully install the first unit of a community center in time for the Rachel Corrie Ramadan Soccer Tournament! The portable office unit included a transformer so we stretched our small grant to install lights along the walkway out to the field, and added new sand, fully levelled to improve the field! Cindy and Craig Corrie personally delivered gently used soccer uniforms. UNRWA cleared the rubble of demolished homes away from the perimeter of the field. We have YOU, our committed supporters, to thank! We hope the hundreds of donated shoes we collected will be allowed in on the next delegation – and we’ve received a seed grant to develop a creative strategy to get doors, wall cement, and windows into Gaza, for so that the soccer players from Ybnah camp can fix their neighborhood’s damaged homes.

How did this project get started?

Our commitment to Gaza began when we contacted the family whom Rachel Corrie sought to protect when she stood before the bulldozer that would demolish their home. The Rebuilding Alliance brought that family to the U.S., joining Craig and Cindy Corrie in a nationwide speaking tour – and we raised the funds we needed to rebuild their home. They and many others in Gaza who knew and cared about Rachel, formed themselves into the Rachel Corrie Sports Initiative to give back to the community.

This past December and January, when faced with the immense loss of life and destruction of Gaza neighborhoods, the Rebuilding Alliance put peacemakers in Gaza and peacemakers in Israel on the phone line, every three days, to tell hundreds of people across the U.S. and Europe what was happening, and brainstorm ways to help safeguard families in Gaza and in Sderot, Israel and make this stop.

When the assault ended, we listened hard to our friends at the Rachel Corrie Sports Initiative who said, "Start with Soccer" -- as soccer could immediately draw neighborhoods together to help heal the trauma that each person had experienced.

And so you did.

Please make another gift now to help us finish the “Beam of Light” project. The funds you donate will complete the lighting of the soccer field. Wooden posts, instead of steel, will keep costs down.

And your donation will extend a ripple effect of goodwill and healing where it is so deeply needed.

Please give now at http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/lights-for-ramadan-soccer-tournament/

With Sincere Thanks, Donna

The little office unit including transformer

Hundreds of pairs of donated sports shoes

Thanks and Request for Help!

Donna Baranski-Walker — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 22:50:06 GMT

Hello Everyone!

Thank you so much for helping Beam of Light: Ramadan Soccer Tournament in Rafah win first place in the GlobalGiving “Ready, Set, Give” Challenge! The news from our partners in Gaza is good; they’ve already installed the first part of their community center on the Unity Club soccer field, and they’re working on getting up lights. It’s incredibly encouraging to be a part of this change, and we’re grateful that so many of you, our donors and helping hands, can be a part of it too.

We need your help once more because the hard work isn’t over! Our next big project is part of GlobalGiving UK’s “Alive and Learning” challenge, and it ends THIS FRIDAY. We want to build a birthing center in Al Aqaba village in the West Bank – the first birthing center in Area C, which suffers from a lack of medical access. In this dark time, our birthing center can bring new hope to a village under demolition orders and a whole area struggling from occupation. Help us by going to our website, www.rebuildingalliance.org, and clicking the link to donate; just five pounds (around $8) is enough to make a difference.

Sincere thanks and best wishes,

Donna Baranski-Walker Executive Director The Rebuilding Alliance

Ramadan in August this year -- let's get the Unity Club Soccer Field ready!

Donna Baranski-Walker — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:21:32 GMT

Hi Everyone,

The Unity Club Soccer Ramadan Soccer Tournament begins in August this year.

There's just enough time now to install the lights and even install the portable office (think bathrooms, water, and a small kitchen for snacks). We ask your help.

Please take a look at our new YouTube video and spread the word.

Sincerely, Donna

Links:

Youtube video: Gaza Soccer - Start Here!

Gaza Soccer Field Survived--Play Means a Lot Right Now

Adnan Abu Al Sa'Ud — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 05:39:43 GMT

"We were surprised the soccer field is still there – so we checked it over carefully and then the children started coming back to play," Adnan said in Rafah, Gaza. He took our call, stepping out of a soccer game. "Most of the no-man's-zone along the border has new mountains made from bombing but because we struggled so hard to be sure there would be no tunnels through our field, our soccer field is still here -- and it saved the row of homes nearby."

"You have to understand why this is so important right here, right now. The kids are running, playing soccer with friends and neighbors, adults are even joining in. Yes, there is destruction everywhere. A third of the children returning to school have lost family members. Homes in nearby Ybna Refugee Camp (and throughout Rafah and all Gaza) are missing doors, windows are blown out, and many neighborhoods are entirely destroyed. But you have to understand that there is also damage you cannot see, the damage that comes from the panic and fear we all experienced."

"The most important thing is to provide an immediate response to the loss and damage that people have experienced. Our soccer field is bringing us together here, now in a way that touches everyone, responds to everyone, builds our community and makes our connection with one another."

Right now, we ask your help to fund lights for what is now known as the "Unity Club Soccer Field." That will help us bring everyone together for a tournament as soon as possible.