Encompass Middle East Visit (May 2009)!

Encompass paid an amazing and inspirational visit to Israel and Palestine earlier this month. The visit was a chance for the staff and Trustees from London to gain a greater understanding of the realities faced by our staff and participants in the Middle East. We were also on the lookout for organisations working towards similar aims to those of Encompass to discover whether there might be opportunities for working together in keeping our young participants involved in promoting tolerance and intercultural understanding once they return home from their Encompass programme.

Alex and Claire Braden, along with Programme Manager Erika and Fundraising Manager Steve, started out our journey in Jerusalem. Monday, our first day, involved meeting up with Amit (our local representative in Israel) and Ashraf (our local representative in Palestine) in East Jerusalem and getting down to some serious business with a meeting that lasted about 5 hours! This was the first time that Erika and Steve had met Amit and Ashraf, and there was certainly a lot to talk about.

This was followed by a visit to a house in the Palestinian village of ‘Anata, which has been demolished 4 times by Israeli forces and rebuilt 5 times by the owner of the house along with help from volunteers all over the world.

Tuesday saw the group travelling between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, where we met with various organisations to discuss their work and to find out whether there were opportunities for our Israeli participants to get involved with them on their return from their programmes.

On our third day, Wednesday, following another quick staff meeting with Amit and Ashraf, we were accompanied by Ashraf to the Palestinian town of Hebron where we visited the old town. We then took a Pope-inspired detour (the Pope was there at the same time as us, although we didn’t manage to catch up with him as we were so busy!) to Beit Sahour to meet with the Alternative Information Centre.

Thursday morning was spent in Ramallah where we paid a visit to Bi’lin Village before meeting with some of the Palestinian participants who have taken part in Encompass programmes over the last few years. Our meeting was an opportunity to hear feedback from our participants, the influence that the Encompass programmes have had on them since coming back, and ideas for how to take the ideas from the programme further. Thanks so much to Naser, Sherin, Iyad, Lowi, Farah and of course Ashraf for taking the time to come and meet us! It really means a lot to us!

From Ramallah we returned to Jerusalem where Amit had organised a parallel meeting with our Israeli participants from the last few years. Again, there were many discussions and ideas exchanged, and we’d like to thank Ditsa, Ohad, Shoshannah, Betzalel and Amit for coming along and talking to us.

Unfortunately this was already our last night in the Middle East and we returned to the UK first thing the next morning.

This was the first time in the Middle East for Erika and Steve and, although Trustees Alex and Claire Braden had visited Israel and Palestine before, we all agreed that the visit was an invaluable opportunity for us to gain greater understanding of the situation in the Middle East.

We’d like to give massive thanks to Ashraf and Amit for all of their help in organising this visit, and to our participants for coming to meet us and showing us their commitment to staying involved.

The Encompass Team.