Fall Prayers for Partnerships with our Sisters and Brothers...  

Greetings to each of you from my desk to yours. As I sit here this day, it is bright and sunny and quite warm with expected rain later in the day. Overall, it has been a much cooler summer than last year here in Detroit.

As I write, two Pal Craftaid Board members, Ervin Bullock and Sarah Humphrey are recently returned from the West Bank and Jerusalem visiting our partner organizations and artisan groups. The original group was to be five people (three had never been to Israel/Palestine), but based on the war between Israel and the Gazans, it was determined that this was not the time to send a delegation. However, one of our obligations as a 501(c)(3) organization is to make regular visits to our partner organizations.

Sarah and Ervin met with our partners and artisans groups to discuss new products, the impact of the current war on their sales, their ability to get supplies and to make shipments, as well as the impact of the sustained violence on individuals. Check out some of their reflections in this newsletter.

This issue of the Pal Craftaid e-newsletter focuses on the annual Board meeting several months ago. It is always great to be able to see the other Board members, for our one time per year face-to-face. Otherwise, our communication is via conference calls and email. The annual meeting was held at my church, Littlefield Presbyterian in Dearborn, MI, in late April. It was a time to review our year of activities, think about new foci and to allocate funds from our 2013 - 2014 sales to our partner organizations. It is always an energizing time for each of us and we leave ready to go for another year.

This year, we are happy to share the following allocation of funds from our sales, fund raising and designated gifts:

• Melia Shop
    - artisan design training                      $ 6,465 fund raisers
  and capacity building                            $ 3,535 sales

• Aid to the Aged (ATTA)                      $    150 designated gifts
                                                            $ 3,000 sales

• Rawdat El-Zuhur School
  in East Jerusalem
  - curriculum enhancement                    $ 5,000 sales

• Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation
  Center in Jerusalem
  - women, youth and                             $ 1,000 sales               general programming

• Atfaluna Society for
  Deaf Children in Gaza                      $ 1,000 sales

• Artisan visit to the U.S. in 2016       $ 1,500 sales

                                                      Total     $21, 650.00

Now is the time to being making arrangements for a consignment sale at your church or other opportunity in your community. Check out how to do so in articles in this issue.

As I write, I am trying to digest the ongoing impact of the rocket shots from Gaza and the retaliation bombings by Israel of Gazan schools, mosques, water filtration plants and much more, not to mention the several thousand deaths and many thousand injuries to Gazans. I know you have all seen the results on your TV screens and your newspapers over the last many weeks. It is hard to imagine how all of this will be reconstructed and some sense of normalcy returned to the life of the Gazans and all Palestinians.

The Atfaluna Society for Deaf Children in Gaza City is a longtime partner of Pal Craftaid. We purchase needlework from the student and parent artisans through Atfaluna and we allocate a portion of our sales income to their programming each year. We have received numerous updates from Atfaluna since this latest "war" began. During the cease fires, the Atfaluna staff has been hard at work identifying where they could help deaf residents and other families in the community. It has been devastating for everyone. It will be a long time before normalcy returns to Gaza, but the work of helping people continues for Atfaluna. 

If you are interested in helping Atfaluna through Pal Craftaid, we would be happy to receive your gift (notate on your check for Atfaluna) at any time, or, you can give online on our web page at www.palcraftaid.org. Checks should be made out to Pal Craftaid and sent to Virginia Priest, treasurer, at 3520 N. 30th Street; Tacoma, WA 98407.

As we move through fall and into winter, keep all Palestinians in your hearts and prayers as they begin to reconstruct in Gaza and pray for tourism to return to the West Bank and Jerusalem.

Together We Serve,

Get ready for the holidays;

Host a Pal Craftaid sale!

by Alexa Smith

   When Hope Village reopens its doors this fall, Mary Kay Boyle will likely be behind the counter, telling stories, or, stocking shelves with fairly traded goods from nine countries, including Ghana, India, Guatemala, and Palestine, the latter courtesy of Pal Craftaid, and, Zatoun Olive Oil.

   The Mission Committee of First Presbyterian Church in downtown Charleston, WV, ran a global marketplace at Christmastime for years. But three years ago, it opened a permanent shop to express its commitment to a more equitable global economy, and, to establishing better ties with individual artisans whose products stock the shelves.

   Now it is a fixture.

   "Such stories to tell," said Mary Kay, during a conversation with Pal Craftaid.

   She has met the carvers in Bethlehem, whose nativities sell quickly each year during the holidays. The same men drafted the Child in the Hand of God sculpture that she watched an elementary-age girl spot, and, ask her mother if it was okay to take home. "She never looked at anything else," says Mary Kay, although there were purses, dolls and scarves galore.

   The nine fair trade organizations marketed at Hope Village are not all alike. Mary Kay prefers those - like Pal Craftaid - who re-invest profits into organizations abroad.

   For instance, profits from Pal Craftaid sales are donated to schools, community organizations and humanitarian efforts in Palestine.

   The city's shoppers support First Church's efforts fully.

   A few years back - just as the then-global marketplace was to open for Advent sales - Charleston was hit by a monster snowstorm, cutting off power in 75 percent of the city.

   Mary Kay and her pastor met at 4 a.m. on opening day when the heat was restored at one of their homes. It turned into a morning of coffee, conversation and prayer. "We decided that people in many parts of the world live like this all the time," she said, so the shop opened despite the weather.

   In three hours - on a wretched morning - the store was crowded with shoppers.

   "I do a lot of crying in the shop," Mary Kay said, touched by the conduit the shop has become for her life - and the lives of others - to connect with people across the globe. Most shoppers ask for stories about the artisans so a grandmother, uncle or sibling understands the significance of a gift.

   High school students, too, come through the shop's doors hoping to shop more justly.

   Mary Kay is always happy to talk about how the artisans' products are a way to do just that.

   Hope Village re-opens this year in November, after a brief hiatus while Mary Kay recovered from a surgery. She's hoping to get herself back to the Middle East yet again to stock up on stories and renew old acquaintances.

   "It just feels this shop provides hope to so many around the world," she said.

The Old City near the Melia Shop.

     It is no secret that violence anywhere in the Middle East hits the tourism industry hard in Jerusalem, and, in the surrounding West Bank.

Everywhere we visited - Bethlehem, East Jerusalem, Hebron - we saw first hand how dwindling tourism hurts the lives of ordinary working folks. And it is getting worse. Much of this is tied, of course, to the troubles in Gaza, as well as war in neighboring Syria and Iraq. Tourists are cancelling. Hotel guests are few. Shopkeepers sit idle. Tour buses stay parked.

     We do want to stress that we felt safe in Bethlehem, East Jerusalem and even in Hebron, a hot spot with a heavy settler population. My traveling companion was Sarah Humphrey of Atlanta and a Pal Craftaid board member and a member of our marketing team.

     When we visited the Giacaman's store on Manger Square in Bethlehem, they said we were the first customers they had seen in two days. The embroidery shop run by the Arab Women's Union - just three blocks off of Manger Square - said it had been even longer since a customer came inside.

Given that tourism - once an economic given - is erratic, it is even more clear that Palestinian artisans need better access to markets abroad, via the internet, and, of course, outlets like Pal Craftaid - where goods may still be sold to support families hard hit by the crisis.

     New product conversations were very open.

     Carvers are now making bark candleholders for votives that are three or four different heights. The women's union had bracelets in stock that are now on the way to the Students for a Just Palestine conference via Pal Craftaid's effort. More than 100 are for sale there. Embroidered T-shirts are being developed for trial sales, and, hijabs, as well, with a design drafted by the artisans.

     Listening to artisans tell the importance of the sale of such goods reiterates the need for better access to fairly traded goods. Our partners in Bethlehem told of a mother who had paid for university educations for seven daughters through their combined embroidery work.

     At the Melia Shop in Jerusalem's Old City, artisans and the shop's manager, Nora Kort, discussed the possibility of creating embroidered belts with buckles, as well as a line of stoles featuring wildflowers of the Holy Land. Pal Craftaid contributed at least $9,000 to help finance marketing support for the shop during our campaigns last year -- by letter-based fund-raising, sales and online crowd funding.

A traditional shawl at the Arab Women's Union shop in Bethlehem.

     The shop has begun ceramic workshops and is training women to make tiles, mugs and bowls, as well as jewelry. We brought back with us olivewood trays and trivets, and, some earrings and necklaces set with pretty stones and beads.

     Just as our artisan friends find creative ways to survive economic deprivation, ideas still flourish to create products that are useful, beautiful and require great skill to make. This reminds us all of our common commitments to each other and enables those who do not know Palestine, to experience a touch of it.