New Jersey Solidarity-Activists for the Liberation of Palestine is supporting this urgent request for financial assistance. Please join us and do what you can to help the critically important work of the UPWC for the women, children and families of Palestine.
Urgent Request from Union of Palestinian Women's Committees Your Help is Needed!
Dear Friends,
We write to you from Palestine at this very difficult time. We the Unionof Palestinian Women's Committees (UPWC) are in desperate need of your help and your kindness. Our lives have been severely limited by the Israeli occupation. It seems that they do everything they can to make life impossible.
Everything is disrupted. Many places of work have been damaged by demolition and people have lost their jobs. The ever growing numbers of closure points make movement to and from work very slow. Food is not reaching our communities in sufficient quantities. Parents are unable to feed their children. Some schools are occupied by the Israeli military.
Our programs serve children and women. Things are always worst of all for the children. They suffer from malnutrition, from nightmares, and in some areas from retardation due to malnutrition of mothers during pregnancy.
The UPWC runs approximately 33 daycare centers and kindergartens serving over 1,500 children. They are now in danger of not being able to remain open because of an unusual emergency situation. Our funds are depleted.
Up till now and for the last 6 years we have been able to cover deficits by donations, but this year and especially these two months the regular donors respond to our requests saying that they are more interested in projects that deal elections process. But, no one is even sure that elections will indeed take place.
We all wonder how we can empower a woman to share in elections while we take away her ability to feed her children. We wonder why the policies of the USA to stimulate democratic reform neglect children's basic rights to security and education.
Many families have lost their breadwinners. Some are unemployed, some in jail, some handicapped by the ongoing violence, and some are underemployed.
Those who work across the green line in Israel do not earn enough to feed their families. In many cases, the women have had to find work as well. In some cases they are the only bread winners.
We, the Union of Palestinian women's Committees, a volunteer non-profit grass-roots organization, employ 50 women as teachers in our daycare centers and kindergartens. All of them are the only breadwinners in their families and have no other avenue of employment. We are unable to pay them for the coming month. This is devastating for them and for their children. Our women are very poor, but they are very much respected by their communities, and most of them, after teaching the children in the morning, spend the afternoon as volunteers helping to empower women in small, poor and neglected villages and refugee camps.
The stories of the women who work with UPWC are heart breaking. We have three teachers in Beit Foureek (Nablus area) who have 6 relatives including husbands who have been killed during the last year, and what is more disturbing, they have 22 members of their family who have been put in prison by the Israelis on flimsy pretenses.
Maha Nassar
Chairperson of Union of Palestinian Women's Committees, UPWC
Al Bireh (Ramallah) Palestine, P.O. Box: 4112
telefax.: 00972-2-2987252
e-mail:
mahanassar@yahoo.com /
upwc@palnet.com
web-site: www.upwc.org
