Iranian Jew, Palestinian Muslim help in West Bank

+ Dialogue's African roots

Sunday, 14 December 2008

"The real change must happen within us.

For only when conflict and negativity are removed from within,

can we play a truly constructive role in establishing peace."

-  Ammachi

Iranian Jew, Palestinian Muslim
help in West Bank

Palestinian Muslim Hammad Hammad ( HHammad111@gmail.com ) and Iranian Jewish Rod Solaimani ( RSolaimani@gmail.com ) met as students at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.
They learned to communicate well and change within, forging a close friendship and respect.
     Then they got truly creative and courageous together.
     Rod and Hammad decided to spend a summer together helping Holy Land children in great need to feel remembered, appreciated, and supported.
     They wanted to help the youth replace despair with hope, desperation with constructive activity, emptiness with meaning.
READ this week's Ha'aretz story about these two Georgetown graduates who insist on improving life for people in need, for their envisioned world, a person at a time.

Iranian Jew and Palestinian Muslim

go to 'summer camp' in West Bank

By Rod Solaimani and Hammad Hammad

Ha'aretz - 14 December 2008 

http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1046116.html

PLAYING FOR CHANGE in South Africa and planet-wide

Not unrelated, the township of Gugulethu, South Africa, is a community in need of immediate assistance and inspiration.
     So PLAYING FOR CHANGE - http://playingforchange.com - is building and supporting the Ntonga Music School, including instruments, to offer Gugulethu's youth an alternative to the violence and deprivation they face daily.
     The worldwide PLAYING FOR CHANGE Community is a multi-racial, religiously-diverse group of artists and inspired people who have come together for a global evolution to connect the world through music.
     They have finished two "Songs Around The World" films performed by Playing For Change international artists -- "Stand by Me" and "One Love."
WATCH the video "Stand By Me" by musicians of many nations and both hemispheres:

http://playingforchange.com/pop.html

DIALOGUE'S ROOTS in South Africa

     At last week's 200th meeting of the Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue in California, participants remembered their birth.
     They realized that not only their DNA, but more recent roots in applied social intelligence, came out of Africa.

Living Room Dialogue at sixteen

Remembering our roots in Koinonia Southern Africa

December, 2008

http://traubman.igc.org/koinoniastory.htm

"Shall I tell you what acts are better than fasting, charity and prayers?

Making peace between enemies is such an act; for enmity and malice

tear up the heavenly rewards by the roots."

                - Prayer from Islamic tradition