Hello everyone!
I’m thrilled to be writing to you tonight with a huge amount of passion and clarity...
The short version:
- I'm hoping to raise money to send 5 young people to a 9 day International Intensive Training in Nonviolent Communication (NVC, sometimes called compassionate communication) in the West Bank, with the added opportunity for one of these young people to participate in a year-long leadership course. More details below.
- My year off is over, and I’m just chomping at the bit to be out in the world again. I want to help support groups and individuals to thrive using principles of nonviolence, specifically NVC. If you know of places where this work would be welcome, please connect me with them. If you’d like to hire me to work with your group, run a training, or work one-on-one with me as a conflict coach, please let me know!
The long version:
I’ve just finished my summer at Seeds of Peace International Camp (SOP) where I work as a dialogue facilitator for young people from conflict regions. SOP started with young people from the Middle East; my campers are from Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and the US. (Here's a video about it if you have a minute). I can’t imagine a more perfect job for me: basically, I get to help people open their hearts to their “enemies”... next to a lake in Maine.
My two dialogue groups:
This year, the two nights before I set out for camp, I could not sleep. I couldn't stop thinking of Gaza, and I couldn’t stop thinking of my grandmother. I knew that people I had met through Seeds of Peace, people with whom I had laughed and cried, with whom I had shared ideas for teaching peace, with whom I had cooked and shared meals, now cowered in fear as they listened to bombs fall around them. I thought of their loneliness and fear, how perhaps it was a loneliness and fear my family has felt too. I ached to do something. In my wakefulness, I opened my computer to see if I could get some news about these friends. On one friend's Facebook page, there was a video she had posted a few weeks before of smoke rising from buildings nearby; she had taken the video from her front porch. On my colleague Mohammed's page, there were updates from the previous days about sheltering more and more relatives in his house until there were 30 under one roof. The latest update was a photo of a gaping hole in the corner of his house and the news that they were now evacuating.
I thought about what resources I had. My stipend from Seeds of Peace I had already earmarked to cover the last installment of my nonviolent communication leadership program. It was almost exactly the amount I needed; I liked the symbolism of taking my compensation from this peace work and using it to cover my training in nonviolence. I thought about the "safety" I had by knowing that this money would cover my commitment to BayNVC, and I realized that one way of stepping into shared responsibility for the damage in Gaza was to give up that safety and take on the risk that I might not be able to earn enough money to cover my tuition, and that I might have to take on credit card debt.
I sat with this plan for a long time; three weeks of camp time is an eternity. Finally, Mohammed arrived from Gaza, literally shell-shocked. His first morning in Maine, after 48 hours of traveling, we sat with him as he shared, even as he apologized, the horrors he had seen, the fear, the 15 minutes when he was certain his house was about to be blown up when he gave his goodbyes to the world. The neighbor’s home exploded with an entire family, not a single survivor remaining to mourn them.
The next afternoon I sat with him by the lake in Maine while he smoked a cigarette (a recent relapse, in response to the war) and told him that I wanted to give him my stipend to use however he thought it would help people. I told him that I thought of the Gazans there knowing about all of us watching and doing nothing, seeing the pictures on the news and on Facebook and remaining silent. I imagined them lonely and scared, maybe infuriated with our silence, wanting help, wanting to be seen. I told him how I thought of my grandmother in Auschwitz so many years ago and imagined her thinking that no one in the world cared. I wanted to say, "I care. I see and I care and I want to help."
I told him the situation: that I had the money set aside for nonviolent communication training, but that I wanted to give it to him.
He wouldn't take it. He said I had already done enough. "Use it for your education," he said. "Your telling me this story is enough. I will bring it back and tell everyone at home. The money isn't important."
We went back and forth; I wanted to do something tangible. We came up with a plan: I would use my stipend to pay for myself, but I would raise money to allow young people from Gaza to have this training that I have gained so much from, that I find so hopeful in my search for real peace, from the smallest level in my classroom to the largest international level. Another facilitator at Seeds of Peace, Tarek, is helping run an International Intensive Training in the West Bank in November. I would try to gather enough funds for 5 people from Gaza to attend this training; one of them could then go on to participate in the yearlong program that has been such a huge transformation for me this year. "No one in Gaza has any money," Mohammed said. If I could raise the money for them to go, it would be an incredible opportunity for these young people.
It just so happened, Mohammed told me, that there were 5 young people from Gaza who had prepared to attend Seeds of Peace in 2007, but then they were not given permission to leave. They ached for a chance to get training.
They will be the first to be offered the opportunity. With yesterday’s ceasefire, the dream is a little closer to a reality that they will be able to get out for the training.
The cost is $880 for each person from Gaza for the 9 day training and room/board (that’s a significant local discount the organizers are offering). On top of that, I’d like to raise enough for one of these people to go forward to participate in the yearlong distance learning program with BayNVC, which involves three trips to California -- a large expense at $11,600 for tuition and airfare, but I’d like to get started on it!
If you’re inspired to give, I welcome your help in making this happen! And I hope you will only give if it feels joyful to you; I would actually be sad if you read this and told yourself that because I've sent you this email, you "should" give. That's the opposite of what I'm going for.
To donate, sign in to Paypal:
Please enter my email address: ablaine@gmail.com
On the next window, please click on "friends or family", as gifts are not subject to the fees. There’s no overhead or anything -- just me collecting money to pay for these tuitions.
If you’d like to donate but this format doesn’t work, let me know -- there are other ways.
And, if you know other people who would like to be involved, please forward this to them.
I haven't given up my original idea, either: my hope is that I can earn enough money myself through my trainings and workshops so that I can still donate my stipend from Seeds of Peace to Mohammed. He wants to start an afterschool program in Gaza.
I’ll let you know how it all goes. Thanks for reading, and thanks to all of you for the continued support!
Much love,
Amanda
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