The Ghirass Centre


	Registered Charity NO. 1100058 Email: contact@bethlehemlink.org


	Bethlehem Link


	Bethlehem Link is a registered charity which promotes cultural links between young people in Palestine and the United Kingdom.


	To visit our partner in Bethlehem, click on the image below


	The Ghirass Centre

The Ghirass Centre provides children of Bethlehem and the surrounding villages and refugee camps a safe place to play, meet friends and develop and grow into young adults. It provides equal opportunities to children from many different family backgrounds from 6 to 14 years and allows the children to participate in activities from 10 am to 4 pm six days a week.

bishop at ghirass 2008_r

Bishop of Bath and Wells at the Ghirass Center 2007

The Centre was set up for two main reasons. Firstly it was the need of a safe place to play. The idea of the Centre began in 1990 when the Intifida (uprising against the Israeli occupation) was at its peak and the closure of schools, the curfews and the lack of a place to play apart from the dangerous and violent streets meant that children were the innocent victims of the uprising. The second need for such a centre was that posed by the current academic philosophy and the lack of any cultural teaching in the Palestinian schools. The importance of the children of Bethlehem being given the opportunity to learn the traditional music, dance and hand-crafts of their country and also gain knowledge of Palestine's history, literature and ecology: for this reason it was appropriately named the Cultural Centre.

The hard work of the Centre was properly acknowledged in 2003 when Ibtisam Ilzghayyer (the Director of the Cultural Centre) won an award from UNESCO for her work with the remedial group.

The Centre's Past

In 1993 the BASR (Bethlehem Arab Society for Rehabilitation) donated one floor of a building and the required educational and playing equipment to house 60 children. Since its establishment, the Children’s Cultural Centre has expanded and grown and developed in every way and now provides an essential facility for over 500 children from the region.




		Ibtisam Ilzghayyer

In the following address to the host organisations from Norway, Ibtisam shares her vision for the Centre and explains what they hope to achieve.

We have managed to build an oasis of security here within the Cultural Centre for all children irrespective of any differences, whether political, religious, gender, social class, location or even differences of ability. We wanted to confirm that differences and diversities are, in actual fact, sources of power and richness. The Centre, therefore is for all.

We dreamed of building a safe place for children and we have achieved that, even under the most difficult circumstances.

Our love and respect for the Palestinian child, for his abilities and his rights, enabled us to establish this inclusive oasis for children from Bethlehem, Beit Jala, Beit Sahour, from AlDeheishah, Aida, Alaza refugee camps and from East and West Bethlehem rural areas.

The Cultural Centre is distinguished not just through our activities, but also our educational philosophy, our continuous support and our unconditional positive acceptance of children. Those who have followed our development from our emergence at the beginning in 1993 until now,know that we have a clear goal for the development of our Palestinian youth.

Despite the difficulties and challenges which have faced us over the years, we have not deviated from that goal.

Recent years have been characterised by many challenges and conflicts; challenges to the survival of the Centre and to our personal survival, as well as challenges to our goals and principles. Our target was, and still is, even in our darkest moments, to plant a love of life in our children and to have a positive view of the future; confirming that there is no doubt that night will be followed by day and that one day the sun will shine.

The love of our homeland, Palestine, is connected in the Cultural Centre to our love of life, hence our slogan ‘while we live, Palestine lives!’

We hope that we will find new ways to help the Centre not only survive but also to grow and develop. This will be achieved by the support of people who are concerned with the development of people in Palestine. In this way, the Centre will remain the safe oasis in which the Palestinian child can grow, learn and develop into a young adult.


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To contact Bethlehem Link email: Contact@bethlehemlink.org Administrator: Megan Holland email: Megan@bethlehemlink.org

			Registered Charity NO. 1100058

				Last update: 09/12/09

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