Abir's Garden Playgrounds for a Safe Place to Grow

Dear Friends,

Greetings from the West Bank, Palestine!   A week ago Friday, Rebuilding Alliance's Accountant, Thai Hien Ho, and I were part of a remarkable meeting near Ein Yanoun at the home of the architect who designed this our third Abir's Garden playground.  An engineer was also there to meet with us and quite a contingent of Combatants for Peace members, including both Israel and Palestinian members and Combatants for Peace board members.  The meeting was gracefully conducted in three languages with Tel Aviv / Tulkarem Team Leaders Maya and Mohanad translating Hebrew and Arabic into English and back.

Our goal was to approve the plans for the third Abir’s Garden Playground and Youth Theater Program. I asked for the meeting because I was concerned that the playground plan presented to Rebuilding Alliance was too expensive at $24K.  With the added cost, we would not be able to also fund the youth theater program.  Remarkably by the end of the meeting a solution was found.

The Palestinian landscape architect, trained in Spain, stood by his design for the playground. He explained that the steep rocky grade requires extra work for leveling and to build the retaining walls, both for the lower playground and upper picnic area level.  Combatants for Peace and Rebuilding Alliance were both impressed with his design and satisfied with his explanation.

Then magic happened:  When I raised my concern about also being able to fund the Youth Theater program, a phone call was made to the mayor of Agraba.   On behalf of the municipality of Agraba, the mayor agreed to match our grant, dollar for dollar!  

Project co-leader, Maya Katz, explained, "We have great cooperation with the Agraba Municipality.  They provided a matching grant for our last project and our teams finished the parking lot and installed a garden at the new school for the village of Kirbet Twir."

So far we have transferred $12K to CfP so the mayor of Agraba confirmed that they will put in the starter $12K so that we'll complete the playground according to spec and launch the theater program!   Combatant for Peace Bilal said, "We are really pleased to begin Phase 1 of the Abir's Garden playground construction in a few days time!"

If you would like to support our project again, one great day to do this will be on Wednesday, April 16th, 2014 starting at 12:00:01 PM (noon) EDT when Microsoft's Youth Spark will provide a 50% match to donations (up to $1,000 per donor).  The bonus competition will end April 17th, 2014, at 11:59:59 AM EDT.  

NOTE:  The project that has the most unique donors on Microsoft YouthSpark's Bonus Day will receive an additional $10,000 from Microsoft.  We CAN DO this: Abir's Garden reached the most donors in the last YouthSpark bonus!

Please mark your calendar for noon, Wednesday April 16th through noon Thursday April 17th! 

Please call me or send email as questions arise and I'll do my best to connect you with the Combatants for Peace team!  My email is Contact@RebuildingAlliance.org and my phone here is 1-970-599-331-2811.

Thank you again for all that you've done to make this remarkable project a reality.

Sincerely,

Donna

P.S.  After the meeting, one of the Combatants for Peace took us to visit Ein Yanoun so that Thai and I could take pictures at the empty site of the playground.  One of the villagers introduced us to the three internationals who are living in the village and working with the villagers to keep everyone safe.  It is a real challenge and very scary — this village is surrounded by 5 settlements with very threatening settlers.  We want to help everyone there to stay in touch with all of you, our Abir's Garden Playground donors, so that in any future moment of need we can all relay their call to our elected officials to rouse the diplomatic corps.  Thank you again.

Links:

• About our partner, Combatants for Peace
• Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel