Trip to Palestine

Children’s Festival- from East Midlands to the Middle East!

This summer, ten artists, teachers, and youth workers from Loughborough, Leicester, Nottingham and Derby will be travelling to Palestine to take part in running the first of an annual Children’s festival.

The UK volunteers will be joining forces with ‘Tent of Nations’, a Palestinian organisation, for the two-week festival for children from the Bethlehem area. The event will include Olympic games, World Cup football, a treasure hunt, a production of Romeo and Juliet, and various other art projects.

Paul Gent, an artist from Loughborough, said; “This will be a chance for children to experience camping for the first time and learn about their rural heritage in a peaceful location. The creative projects will be educational, promoting tolerance and peace and will challenge prejudice, but most importantly the festival will be a chance for the children to have a break from the harsh conditions under the Israeli occupation. For the volunteers, this will be a chance to personally discover what life is like under occupation, but also to enjoy Palestinian rural life amongst friends- it will be a rewarding experience all round”

Many of the children will be relieved from the suffocating life in the refugee camps where violence from the occupying soldiers is normal daily life. Tent of Nations hopes to be able to bring Israeli and Israeli settler children to the festivals in the future.

Paul Gent is encouraging links between UK schools and children in Israel and Palestine. For more information, contact Paul Gent; pablogent@yahoo.com or look at www.linkpalestine.org