Friends of Hebron Sydney is committed to advancing access to education for children and young people that live in Hebron and the South Hebron Hills. School children can be denied access to well-resourced and safe education due to the occupation, with delays at checkpoints, settler harassment and violence, attacks on schools and the demolition of school premises are well documented 1,2,3,4
My Dream Centre
The Dream Centre for Children with Autism offers specialized services to one of the most marginalized segments of the Palestinian society. By late September 2023, the centre was caring for 120 students with a specialized team of 16 professionals in special education. With permits for workers cancelled since October 7th 2023, parents have been unable to pay for their children’s schooling. Friends of Hebron Sydney raised the required matched funding to keep the school operational in the 2024 – 2025 school year.
The Umm Al Khair kindergarten (affectionately known as the Huda Kindergarten) was Friends of Hebron’s first project. In 2010 we raised $5,000 for the rehabilitation of a structure into a school. Between 2019 -2023 we reconnected with the school to remunerate two early childhood teachers.
The Umm Al Khair community places a high value on education but in 2009 more than 25 kindergarten-age boys and girls had no kindergarten to go to. According to the OCHA the refugee community of Umm Al Khair is considered one of the most vulnerable communities in the southern parts of Hebron Governorate as only a barbwire separates between it and the settlement of Karmel.
A series of demolitions took place in 2006 and 2008 while a number of structures in the community have received Stop Work and demolition orders by the Israeli Civil Administration.
The kindergarten then opened in November 2010 and classes have been running ever since. In 2012 an artist from the UK decorated the building by painting beautiful, colourful and inspiring murals on its walls, a wonderful splash of colour in this desert landscape. More details here.
Dkaika Education Access Project
The Dkaika education access project provides safe school- transport for young learners as well as providing safe transport to a number of young women to attend university. Friends of Hebron have been supporting driver wages and vehicle costs since 2014 and fundraising continues to support this project.
Dkaika is a small village of approximately 320 people, with a growing population of school children. The school in Dkaika serves 51 students between the 1st and 6th grades. The school was demolished by Israeli forces on Jan, 11th, 2011, along with several other buildings in the remote community. Students travel outside the community for secondary education. At the end of the school year 2010-2011, there were 13 students in the 6th grade. On 2011 only 5 students progressed to secondary school due to the long distances students had to walk to reach their schools.
The project has also been extended to drive the kindergarten students at Umm Al Khair to school, which has been identified as a necessary measure to protect the children from settler harassment.
Gaza Research & Psychosocial Project
After the May 2021 war on Gaza a local organisation in Hebron working on women’s issues requested a project be initiated to hire a Gazan woman for six months to research the humanitarian needs of women to provide research for further funding and support. Friends of Hebron are contributing to the wages of the project officer.
The project is anticipated to run from June 2021 – December 2021. The project coordinator is involved in both consultation meetings with women as well as delivering psychosocial exercises for women affected by the conflict. As our work focusses on the Hebron Governorate, Friends of Hebron launched a specific fundraising campaign to raise money tied specifically to this endeavour.
School in Hebron’s outlying villages
In 2019 Friends of Hebron Sydney supported the rebuilding of a school in one of Hebron’s outlying villages. This is the site of the school prior to building. The village is not named in this article to reduce the risk of another demolition.
In 2018 Israel’s occupation forces demolished the school buildings then confiscated tents provided as substitute classrooms, along with all the equipment, even the blackboards and chalk. Children finished the school year in a small tent, erected every morning then taken down and hidden in a cave at night.
A piece of land with a small building in a more secluded location was donated for use as a school. Now the village has a school again, a villager who moved to the city has decided to return with his five school-age children. Our partner organisation, Hebron International Resource Network (HIRN), raised funds to rebuild it on a new and safer site over the summer 2019. Thanks to your generosity last year, Friends of Hebron was able to make a significant contribution. Currently, the school is hosting more than 20 students from 1st to 4th grade. In the meantime, HIRN have applied to the Irish Teacher’s Union for funding to establish a playground and a garden at the school and this work is in progress.
In 2011 – 2012 Friends of Hebron Sydney raised funds for the building of a school in the South Hebron Hills. The Bedouin community of Khashem Al Daraj is located at the most southern end of the West Bank. The basic infrastructure is very weak with a lot of services lacking, including adequate roads and scarce water quantities coupled with high unemployment and rising poverty.
The community has a population of 650 Palestinian Bedouins living on herding as the main source of income. It has faced a number of Israeli restrictions including the demolition of 7 water cisterns in December 2010. Moreover, the community is surrounded by an area declared by the Israeli military as a “Firing Zone” to which access is not allowed. Friends of Hebron ran two fundraisers to contribute to the new building that was erected next to the old, dilapidated one-room school. The new structure has two classrooms and a staff room to accommodate the growing number of school children in the area. The community here is one of the most impoverished in the West Bank, and their lands are increasingly being threatened by military zone closures, expansion of settlements and threat of demolitions of surrounding villages. The psychological and physical pressures on these communities are great.
Tel Rumeida (Shuhada St Kindergarten)
Friends of Hebron Sydney have had a long relationship with the Shuhada St kindergarten, starting in 2013 when funds were raised to rehabilitate a building into a school. Friends of Hebron Sydney covered the remuneration of three teachers from 2014 – 2018, and in 2019 the Hebron Municipality committed to funding teacher salaries.
The Old City of Hebron is an area of great tension as the settlements have grown inside the Palestinian community, causing severe restriction of movement for Palestinians, the rise of hostilities by settlers and ongoing harassment by soldiers. There are psychological pressures on the children of the area due to the presence of Israeli settlers and soldiers. Since TIPH stopped working in Hebron, only three international organsiations remain based in the Old City to monitor human rights violations, to accompany the children to school and to monitor the checkpoints (EAPPI, CPT, ISM).
friendsofhebronsydney.org.au 