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 There
are many small, local, effective organizations trying to make
life better for the Christian Communities in the Holy Land.
And in doing so, they act as a counter to the forces driving
Christians from the Holy Land. Many of these organizations struggle
financially and have limited or no access to sources of funding
outside the Holy Land.
We have selected a few of them (and we intend to add to this
number on an ongoing basis as soon as we are able). We
hope you will help us help them, of course. But in
addition, we hope you will contact them directly through mail,
emails and visits when you visit the Holy Land. We invite
you to get connected with them and stay connected with them.
Let them know about your concern and interest.
Click here to visit our Bookstore for
further reading about Christians in the Holy Land.
To help us support these charities
CLICK HERE.
Your donation of $40 or more to help us support them will also
include a participation in the dedication of the Christian
Forest on Mt. Tabor. Click here
for more information about that participation. And to find
out why our minimum suggested donation to help us support Holy
Land churches and charities is $40, click
here.
We ask you to think of the Christian Communities in
the Holy Land when you, a loved one or friend celebrate Christian
life cycle and other events, such as weddings, graduations,
confirmations, baptisms, Christenings, or anniversaries for
example, and to use those occasions to make a donation to help
us to support these local Holy Land churches and charities and
to participate in the dedication of the Christian Forest on Mt.
Tabor.
The event that you celebrate with your
support will be memorialized both in a beautiful certificate
that we will send to you as well as in a Book of Dedications
which will be on public display in the Holy Land. You can
visit it and the Christian Forest you helped to dedicate when
you visit the Holy Land.
To help us support these charities
CLICK HERE.
 In
Memory of Father Majid Atallah
Father Majid Atallah died this summer.
Father Majid led a life of such selflessness that it is not
inappropriate to compare him to a Saint. His passing has left
this world a poorer place.
Father Majid was born in Haifa in 1932. In 1940 his family
moved to Nazareth and it is there he spent the rest of his life
in service to us all. Father Majid's major (but far
from only) life work was leading and nurturing the Catholic
Scout Movement in Israel. And for that he was nationally
recognized. After long association with the Scouts, Father Majid
decided to enter the priesthood and was ordained in 1994, just a
few days short of his 62nd birthday. He continued his work
with the Scouts.
After he was ordained, with the help of his daughters, he
founded the Almahabbi Club. Initially this was a club for
children from ages 4 on up which met on Sundays after mass to
help them understand how to live and behave in a Christian way
in service to the entire community. The club expanded in
scope and purpose to include children from Moslem and Jewish
families on weekdays. Imagine these children spending time
in each other's homes as part of the club activities.
In addition rooms at the club's headquarters serve to house
pilgrims to Nazareth, encouraging Christians of all
denominations from all over the world to visit, and connect
with, the Holy Land and the Christian Communities in the Holy
Land.
Today the club is run by a priest who was assigned to carry on
Father Majid's work. His wife Amaal and his daughter Wedad
remain actively involved.
To help us support this and our other charities
CLICK HERE.
ALAML Organization of Contemporary
Dance-Nazareth
ALAML was founded and is run by Wedad
Atallah, a daughter of Father Majid. ALAML received
its not-for-profit status in October 2008 and began operations
with ballet classes for 300 children. The classes are held
in facilities rented from the Nazareth YMCA., which Wedad
refurbished, with friends, into lovely dance studios. You can
only imagine the work, the determination and the dedication
required for Wedad to bring this dream to life. She is a proud
legacy to Father Majid.
Space is cramped, to be sure, but the community now has a
resource for children that will enhance their lives. We
believe it is destined to become a revered institution in
Nazareth that will effect for the better innumerable lives. And
it will provide a reason for Christians to remain in the Holy
Land and, perhaps, to return to it. The Christian
Communities in the Holy Land need people like Wedad and
institutions like her dance school. She and her work are
more than deserving of your support.
The Nazareth Christian Ladies Charity
Society
In 1935 a
group of women in Nazareth responded to the plight of Christian families in Nazareth that were in desperate need of support. Initially they focused
their efforts on helping
the elderly women in the community. They made a
significant impact and their drive and determination to be
of service was handed down to generation after generation of
successors.
Today the Nazareth Christian Ladies Charity Society
has grown into a government registered not for profit
organization that embraces all five
churches in Nazareth, including the Roman Catholics, Maronites, Greek Orthodox, Anglicans, and Catholic
Melechites. The Society assists all members of the Christian Community in
meeting the most basic needs of health and education,
including an annual drive to provide uniforms
and books for children in the community to get a Christian
education.
However, in recent years prevailing
conditions in Nazareth and the Holy Land have resulted in insufficient funds to meet
the needs of the community. This lack of funding has meant that many of the Society's activities,
and ambitions, had to be scaled back. With your help, this
truly pan-Christian group can continue to serve the
Christian Communities in the Holy Land and provide crucially needed support to all the Christians
living in Nazareth.
To help us support this and our other charities
CLICK HERE.
Integratsia
Integratsia is a project of
Bishop Riah H. Abu El-Assad of the Episcopal Diocese of
Jerusalem. It will be an educational center that is
dedicated to help normalize relations and dispel myths of the
past that continue to live and challenge peaceful coexistance
among the diverse populations in the Holy Land. It is a
vision of reconciliation, of normalization of relations, among
Christians, Moslems and Jews. It is intended as a place
where children from the three religions can come to learn to
respect and become acquainted with each other while recognizing
the sameness and otherness of each in a healthy and positive
manner. And while the targeted groups will, in the first
instance, be children, Integratsia will also engage parents and
friends.
At this time the Bishop has established Integratsia as a
not-for-profit corporation in Israel. Property for the
educational center has been acquired, but funds are needed for
construction and other aspects of the project. Donated
funds are being placed into a trust pending their being needed.
Bishop Riah is well known throughout the Holy Land and Europe.
Among his many ambitious and successful projects is the Bishop Riah Educational Campus. The Campus began as the
Christ Church Episcopal School in 1851.
Through Bishop Riah's efforts the school grew into the Campus,
and was renamed to honor him for his efforts. Bishop Riah's
stature and history, combined with his vision for Integratzia,
make the project a very worthy addition of our group of
Supported Charities, promising yet another institution that will
help make the Holy Land an attractive place for Christians to
remain and return.
To help us support this and our other charities
CLICK HERE.
Instituto Educativo Assitenziale
S. Anna
St. Anne's school
is located
in Zippori (Sepphoris) which, according to tradition, was
the home of Joachim and Anna, the parents of Mary, the mother of
Jesus. The school began in 1924 in three
rooms as a resident school for girls at a time when girls were
normally not permitted to attend school. The School
expanded in 1948 in reaction to the widespread poverty in the
area at that time. In the 1970's the School expanded its
purposes to provide for "troubled" girls,
including those in trouble with the law or whose families felt
they could no longer deal with certain behaviors. Also in
the 1970s the school added a facility in Nazareth to serve boys.
But it is a day to day struggle to assure funds sufficient to
meet the needs of the children St. Anne's served. Your
help is needed.
To help us support this and our other charities
CLICK HERE.
Salvatorian Sisters Greek
Catholic School
 The
student body at the Salvatorian Sisters'
Greek
Catholic
School
in
Nazareth
is comprised of 1550 boys and girls from kindergarten
through high school. 85% are Christian and 15% Muslim.
Students learn English, Arabic and Hebrew as a
regular part of the curriculum.
The school promotes mutual understanding and tolerance
among the children and their families as well as among
other segments of the society. The school is also
an innovator, when it has the funds to do so. For
example the school created a joint project with one of
the most prestigious Jewish high schools in Israel,
where the students produced a very polished film on
Arab-Christian-Jewish relationships. The school
discovered, however, that before such a project could
begin, the teachers from both schools required some
learning in cross-cultural understanding, and so a
program to provide that training was immediately
created.
The school believes that
limited resources do not excuse compromises in quality.
So, while class sizes are generally large to accommodate
the many students, this is viewed just another problem
that must be addressed in achieving and maintaining the
highest quality education. To that end, for
example, teachers are evaluated annually, something that
is very unusual in the area. And the students are
held accountable for their academic performance also.
They are taught to "come to school as a verb, not a
noun."
Further, the school opens it facilities to the community
at large. For example the school's auditorium is
made available to a ballet school. And this
reflects the school's desire to produce broadly educated
graduates. Each student is exposed to classical
music and sports that are not common to the area (such as
volleyball and ping pong, to help assure a well rounded
education is provided.
The school remains in need of funds for scholarships to
help support its open admissions policy. Funds to
provide for an orchestra remain a dream for now.
With your help we can assist in making this, and more, a
reality.
To help us
support this and our other charities
CLICK HERE.
St. Maron Maronite Church
 When this congregation was forced to find
a new home, the entire Christian communi ty
came together to help them raise funds. The result is a
beautiful church that truly belongs to all Christians. But
funds have been exhausted, with the facilities to serve the
community's needs remaining incomplete. You can see them,
the bare cinderblock structure in the picture on the right of
this paragraph.
To help us support this and our other charities
CLICK HERE.
 The Holy Family
Hospital
The Holy Family Hospital is a
general public hospital located
in Nazareth
serving
almost 200,000 people from
Nazareth and the surrounding villages on
a non-discriminatory basis,
including Christians,
Jews,
Moslems, Cherkesians and Druze.
The employees in the hospital are from a variety of religious
backgrounds as well.
In addition, the Hospital has
opened a channel with the
Palestinian authority through the Jenin hospital to admit and
treat patients from the Jenin area.
The hospital receives no governmental
funding.
Notwithstanding being chronically short of funds, new,
energetic management which came on board in the last six years
has transformed the hospital into a high quality teaching
facility and has inaugurated such new
capabilities as a comprehensive breast care center in
2002.
By 2005 the Center had provided almost 6000 mammography,
2500 breast ultrasound examinations and 500 core biopsies. 70
Cases were diagnosed as a breast cancer and all of them were
treated. And it
must be emphasized that this is only one of the areas in which
the Hospital has grown, innovated and increased the services it
provides.
Financially the
Hospital has come to operate with a balanced budget through
sound management and realized
efficiencies.
However limited funds place extreme constraints on the
Hospital’s ability to grow to serve a growing population and to
assure it employs the latest technological medical equipment.
Developing new capabilities and projects including new
technology is very expensive and well above the financial
ability of the hospital to reach.
Your help is needed.
It is needed not only to grow but also to maintain the
acute hospital care and long term admission beds
that the community
so desperately
needs, including nursing and complicated geriatric beds, chronic
ventilated patients, psychiatric and others.
To help us support this and our other charities
CLICK HERE.
 The
Art Gallery in Um el Fahm
While it is not a Christian charity, nor located in a city with
Christian significance, the Art Gallery in Um el Fahm is
included among our supported charities in recognition of its
efforts to promote reconciliation among the three great peoples
in the Holy Land: Christians, Moslems and Jews, and for its
efforts to serve as a counterweight to those who would tend
toward extremism.
In its own words, the Gallery's "means are meager and the road
is long and difficult. With only [our extremely limited]
existing means we have embarked on several different activities.
Artists, curators and other professionals from different
countries and different cultures have been invited to take part
in this joint collaboration. The gallery has become an important
social and cultural meeting place. The creative workshops,
seminars, gallery talks, symposiums, large number of art
exhibitions and unique display spaces have turned it into a
central place in the local and international culture scene. [The
Gallery is] an inviting place, capable of embracing and
enriching, bridging gaps and connecting different cultures, all
this in the heart of a troubled, war weary, region."
To help us support this
and our other charities
CLICK HERE.
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