November 2021 Newsletter

November

Palestinian American Community Center

November Newsletter #SupportTheMission

2021

November 2021

Palestinian American Community Center

If you like anything we are doing, please donate at paccusa.org/donate Every dollar helps keep us going!

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November 2021

Palestinian American Community Center

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We Launched Our New Branding!

As you can probably tell by now, we launched a new logo and branding for PACC! Our new logo and branding symbolizes the connection that we continuously strive to foster within our community. The olive tree symbolizes our steadfast commitment to justice. The roots symbolize the older generations and the branches symbolize the new generations. The roots will always nourish the tree and the branches will only continue to grow. For our full concept note, watch this video in English and Arabic.

Through social media, our online community waited in anticipation for our big reveal as we continued to build on our big announcement! On November 14, 2021, we held an in- person and social media launch. We had about 100 people present in person as we revealed our new branding and gave out some of our new branding merchandise. Online, we had over 1,000 interactions as we revealed our surprise and our new logo!

November 2021

Palestinian American Community Center

Community Engagement Community Needs Survey We put together a community needs survey to deepen PACC’s understanding of the community and enhance our programs to better serve our community. To date, we have 263 respondents. Our goal is 300.

Please help us reach our goal by taking the survey in English or in Arabic.

Click here to take the Arabic survey

Click here to take the English survey

Get Out the Vote We wrapped up our Get Out the Vote efforts by continuing to pass out our 2021 General Election Resource Guides in both Arabic and English, and posted a ‘Yalla Vote’ video that received 28,800 views on social media reminding people about the local election and the importance of voting on November 2, 2021.

Clifton Community Resource Expo PACC hosted a table at Clifton’s first ever Community Resource Expo, which brought together all the great organizations, groups, and services that the Clifton area has to offer for families, individuals, and senior citizens living in the Passaic County area. We showcased our literary magazines, the programs we offer, and our Palestine education guides.

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November 2021

Palestinian American Community Center

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Changing the Narrative on Thanksgiving Marketing Campaign We sent out a newsletter with various resources to debunk the myth of Thanksgiving and acknowledge the violent history behind it. As a community of Palestinians, we showcased our solidarity with our Indigenous siblings given that we continue to face similar struggles against ethnic cleansing, displacement, and erasure of identity.

International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People (Nov. 29) We created a banner and passed out flyers locally that included QR codes to our Resource and Action guides to remind people that November 29 is the annual International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People! We also created interactive social media campaigns to encourage people to show off their Palestinian pride and educate others around them.

We spent the afternoon in Philadelphia to join the Office of Immigrant Affairs’ Palestine solidarity rally, and later on joined Al Bustan Seeds of Cultures’ Palestine Culture Day. We handed out educational material and sold our merchandise at both events!

November 2021

Palestinian American Community Center

Fundraising

Giving Tuesday 2021: Reclaiming the Palestinian Narrative through food

Our Giving Tuesday campaign this year was to raise funds to renovate our small office kitchen into a fully functional commercial kitchen. This new kitchen will be used to host a new Palestinian cooking class program for our community members to enjoy and to teach them more about the traditional Palestinian culture and cuisine. We successfully raised over $17,000 with the help of 160 donors! We have received the working permit for our kitchen and we are ready to get to work!

You can still donate at: launchgood.com/pacc21

Social Services

Turkey Vouchers

In collaboration with Islamic Relief and Jerusalem Supermarket, we were able to give out 225 turkeys to 191 families so that they can enjoy a meal with their families over the holiday weekend.

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November 2021

Palestinian American Community Center

Winter Clothing Drive To continue practicing mutual aid and support our community, we hosted a winter drive where people donated new/light used clothing, household items, and baby items that families in need were able to come pick up. Over 60 PACC families benefited from the event, and due to the influx of items, we were also able to donate to other local organizations including Smile, BLM Paterson, and Black Men United.

We thank the community for their generosity!

Excluded New Jerseyans Fund Application As soon as the application for those excluded from stimulus checks of government support during COVID-19 came out, we helped 7 people from our community complete the form.

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November 2021

Palestinian American Community Center

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Events

Palestine Monday To celebrate Mohammad Sabaaneh’s launch of his new graphic novel, Power of Dreams: My story is Palestine, we hosted a virtual book talk and digital gallery view of his work! Sabaaneh talked us through what motivated him to create the graphic novel, and what his goals with producing work like this are. We had a lively discussion with 15 people on Zoom and 233 total views on Facebook.

Sunday Series We celebrated another book launch this month! This time, it was for Hiba Bi’rat’s new poetry book. We were able to hear some of the poems from her book and held a moderated conversation with Hiba about her process of writing poetry in general. There were 40 people in attendanceattended the launch and we were happy to celebrate the success of one of our own community members! You can purchase a copy of Hiba’s book from our PACC Store.

November 2021

Palestinian American Community Center

Women’s Brunch Our women’s brunch this month was full of fun with a skincare routine workshop hosted by Saniara Mortaga!

We had 16 women join, and all were happy to have a moment to be pampered and learn how to take care of themselves.

Programs

Advocacy and Community Engagement Team This month, we launched our 2021-2022 ACE team! We have 9 youth in our new cohort, and all met together to go over program requirements and get introduced to the program. We already jumped into conversations about grassroots organizing, civic engagement, and Palestinian history. We are rejuvenated by the youth and cannot wait for all the amazing work they will bring to the table!

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November 2021

Palestinian American Community Center

Programs During November, we either reached the midpoint for our programs or we finished a 5 week session and started a new 5 week session. Our Executive Director has started evaluation rounds for all our programs. She has been attending the various classes we offer and evaluating the instructors’ teaching methods, talking to the students about their satisfaction and improvement levels, and assessing all of the classes as a whole. We do this to ensure the quality of the programs that we deliver to our community and to make sure that we are continuously improving. For our Arabic program specifically, we set up two parent-teacher conferences to discuss with the parents how the program is going, our goals behind the program and how we can improve.

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November

Palestinian American Community Center

PACC_USA

2021