Help Traumatized Palestinian Children

Summer camp at the Spafford Children’s Center (SCC) brings together wonderful excursions and daily fun and learning. The teachers and camp counselors find clever, and inexpensive, ways to engage the children and help them gain skills during the summer sessions.

There are science experiments in the SCC courtyard—why does the blue liquid bubble up before it spills over the cup? Another day features a tour of Dar al-Consul to learn about the Christian culture preserved below the streets of the Old City. Back to the Center campers enjoy fingerpainting, stringing beads, and the universal children’s favorite: blue slime. They even had a demonstration of the proper way to brush their teeth and were given a free toothbrush to take home!

In the heat of the Jerusalem summer everyone loves squirt gun games where the wettest child wins. There are more water games such as a relay race where cups are poured over the head of the first child then into the cup of the second child all the way down the line. The team with the most water at the end wins, however everyone wins having fun getting wet. These may sound like activities American children experience at camp, and they are, yet they mean even more for Palestinian children experiencing the constant stress of living amid ongoing conflict and uncertainty.

Your donations through GlobalGiving to the American Friends of the Spafford Children’s Center, a 501c3 organization devoted to raising funds for SCC, help provide the services Palestinian children in East Jerusalem need to grow and develop to their potential.

Please give as generously and frequently as you can.