There was a lot of disappointment in June when CADFA’s young Palestinian visitors were told that their visit to the UK had to be delayed.
They had heard about our previous, amazing visits bringing young people from the villages, towns and refugee camps of the West Bank and were looking forward to the adventurealso from Jerusalem to meet and exchange experiences with young people in the UK. They watched the rockets soar over their heads between Israel and Iran and knew the reason why they didnt come then, but specially with the terrible news from everywhere in Palestine sounded very uncertain about whether they would actually manage to visit us.
By now, though, we and they are deep in replanning their visit for September-October – they are doing Zoom English classes to prepare and we are discussing all moves of their journey in West Wales, Mid-Wales, South Wales and London, confirming arrangements with schools, youth clubs and community groups and we are all really excited to meet and hear from them soon!
Some of the event that had previously been planned for their summer visit went ahead with the children’s on Zoom instead of in person – in the last couple of weeks they have met children in a Welsh school and joined in three very different public meetings, the last of which was Camden’s annual Palestine Day in Calthorpe Community Garden where the audience were completely delighted to have a brief interaction with the young Palestinians they hope to see in person in a month or two.
CADFA have been busy with group visits to and from Palestine for the past twenty years. – “It is a positive and hopeful thing to do at this terrible time of genocide and oppression,” explains CADFA’s director, “It helps to build understanding of what is happening in Palestine and encourages people to work for human rights and equality.”
Although we have no grant funding and the costs of these visits are met by the donations of individuals and the co-operation of partner groups across the country, we are working on more visits than ever, and hope to take this group to Wales anf London in September, another group to the North of England in November and another to London in February.
We would love to hear from anyone who is able to help – Please contract us on contact@cadfa.org and see news if the visits on CADFA.org