Thank you for visiting my Pilgrims of Ibillin fundraising page!  This is the organization I work for, and I believe passionately in its good work.  I'd like to invite you to join Don and me in giving as generously as you can to extend a hand to brothers and sisters living in the pressure-cooker that is today's Holy Land.

Pilgrims of Ibillin supports peace-building programs in Israel/Palestine, giving Americans a secure and tax-deductible way to truly make a difference in a volatile part of the world.  My organization began in 1995 to support the schools founded by Abuna Elias Chacour, now Archbishop of the Melkite Catholic Church in Akko, Haifa, Nazareth, and all Galilee.  Today we do that and more.

Your gift of $50 or $100 or more will be used to finish new classrooms so that 200 additional students can be enrolled in the Ibillin schools founded by Abuna Chacour.  $40 will pay full tuition for one elementary student for a month.  $210 will pay tuition for a high school student for a year!

The need for humanitarian aid and school support for Palestinians living in Israel and the West Bank has never been greater.  Poverty and harassment are extreme in the West Bank already.  For Palestinians living in Israel, things are moving in the same direction.  Even in Israel, 60% of Palestinian families live in poverty.  Fully 65% of the 3,000 students at MEEI could not be there without financial assistance.

Ninety percent of donations to Pilgrims of Ibillin in 2008-2009 will support the Mar Elias Educational Institutions' in Ibillin, Israel, providing scholarships and technology, and helping build new classrooms and renovate old ones.   In these schools, students and faculty include Christians, Muslims, Druze, and Jews.  This is one of the rare places in the state of Israel where people from all these groups can truly know each other and work together as equals. 

The other ten percent of donations go to the following peace-building programs: 

• jobs-creation in Zababdeh in the West Bank where residents of this Christian village have been cut off by checkpoints and embargoes from old ways of supporting themselves,
• Al Haneen theater in Nazareth, which takes plays about reconciliation into schools and communities,
• a leadership development program for twenty-somethings in Bethlehem, preparing a next generation of leaders to envision peace and take concrete steps to bring about a better future,
• student scholarships at the Friends' Schools in Ramallah and the Lutheran elementary school in Jerusalem

Please visit our website at http://www.pilgrimsofibillin.org, and check out pictures of MEEI and our other peace-building partners at http://www.flickr.com/groups/pilgrimsofibillin. 

Your contribution will help Build Peace and increase the possibilities for mutual understanding and reconciliation in all these programs.  Donating through this website is simple, fast and totally secure. It is also a most efficient way to support our fundraising efforts. 

Many thanks for your support -- and don't forget to forward this to anyone who you think might want to donate too!

May the blessings of Thanksgiving and Christmas be yours in abundance!