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Our last three years newsletters.
Come celebrate our 50th Anniversary with us. Find our inside!
A wonderful story of how we started.
What does Rawdat El Zuhur mean?















The School Buildings
Teaching peace is around and within us.

The yearly field trip and day camps.
How you can sponsor a child and build for peace.
Our graduates continue helping.
Teaching peace is an important life meaning at Rawdat El Zuhur.

Just some of our friends.


 
 
 

 


Cover of the Book: click to Archives
 
P.O. box 19796, Jerusalem 91017 
Tel. 02-628-2062, FAX 02-6287842



 
 
 
 

September 2010    Newsletter    

January 2010          News

September 2009    Newsletter

December 2009     Newsletter

December 2007     Newsletter

December 2006  Newsletter

December 2005 Newsletter
 

 2004 -       In November 2004 Rawdat El-Zuhur 50th anniversary book was published by Turbo-Design-Ramallah, Palestine.  A Radiant Hope (Amal wa Nour), a beautiful book, is 60 pages in Arabic and English.  It is full of pictures, text and stories of the school and its founder, Elizabeth Nasir.  Friends who have not received it and would like a copy, please contact info@rawdat.org  You can also download it from this site

 The format is in PDF, and the first complete link will take about 40 minutes to download if you use a modem with a fast computer. 

Whole Book, A Radiant Hope. It is broken down into 5 page segments that can be viewed five pages at a time

The format is in PDF, and the first complete link will take about 40 minutes to download if you use a modem with a fast computer. 
Whole Book, A Radiant Hope. Read it 5 pages at a time. They are broken down into 5 page segments that can be viewed five pages at a time.
Pages 1-5
Pages 6-10
Pages 11-15
Pages 16-20
Pages 21-25
Pages 26-30
Pages 31-35
Pages 36-40
Pages 41-45
Pages 46-50
Pages 51-55
Pages 56-60

Archived Newsletter that have been entered.  Please click the pin below

November 2003

July 2002 

November 2002 
November 2001 

November 2000

November 1999 

November 1998 


Other News
This week in Palestine – issue No. 48, April 2002

Elizabeth Nasir- ( 1909-1987) The dynamic woman behind the story of Rawdat El-Zuhur. 

Fifty years ago on a cold February day in 1952, Elizabeth Nasir who was  the first woman director of the social welfare department in Jerusalem (Jordan at that time),  was on one of her inspection  tours  in the area.  She ran across two little girls around six and five years old hanging around one of  the streets of Ramallah.   Their sight meant a social problem to Lizzy as she was known by  her friends.  Immediately she got out of the car and spoke to the girls to find out that they were begging because they had no food at home. Upon accompanying those girls to their home, which was a bare hovel with torn sack cloth on the floor, she found out a blind mother, and a sick father with  no food whatsoever aound.  She immediately got a court order to put the girls in the reformatory to spare them further destitution and humiliation. 

This incident was the turning point in the life of Elizabeth Nasir,  who had been evicted from her home in Jaffa in 1948 where she was working as a social worker.   She  committed herself to shelter  destitute girls and help them earn a living by honorable means.  To fulfill that goal, she used part of her home for this project,  and she was personally on the streets looking for destitute girls, and searching for them in hovels and caves.  She even sat in coffee shops  in the old city, to the shock of passers by,  so that she can talk to drivers and laborers who knew  the whereabouts of those girls.   With financial support of her many  friends, Elizabeth was able to train the girls with the necessary skills for work.    She believed very strongly in the power of  music in lifting  the spirits, and   she was the talk of the town as she danced and skipped with those barefooted girls.    In 1955 she was awarded a special certificate from the National Recreation Association of the USA for “Enriching the Human Spirit through Recreation.”  She intentionally named the home of those girls Rawdat El-Zuhur, (Garden of flowers)  to spare them any stigma and to make  them feel like flowers in a garden.  She was avante-garde for her generation, and she always had original ideas and her friends and colleagues never ceased to be amazed at her energy and her progressive thinking,  and her determination to achieve what she set out to achieve. She gets credit for playing a very important role in putting an end to the begging phenomenon in Jerusalem before 1967. 

Elizabeth  had started her career as a teacher, and then she shifted to social work.  But she was truly a mixture of both, a born teacher and  a dedicated social worker which were a great asset to the   spirit of Rawdat El-Zuhur. The  loving care, compassion  and the respect for the human dignity continue to prevail up till this day.  She never allowed anybody to sulk or be violent with the girls.  Only a pleasant teacher could  work at Rawdat El-Zuhur, and the only time she was forced to ask a teacher to leave was when that  teacher referred to the girls as “street girls”.

After the Israeli occupation in 1967,  the new challenge for Lizzy was to  meet the arising need for Palestinian schools in East Jerusalem.   By 1971 Rawdat El-Zuhur developed into a coeducational elementary school,  with an emphasis on moral values and quality education. A kindergarten was added in 1979.  Music and dancing, along with  art, and sports continue to be an integral part of the school curriculum.  The  dream of Elizabeth Nasir was fulfilled before she passed away on April 2, 1987.

Elizabeth and her twin sister Victoria were  born in Nablus in  1909  to Rev. Hanna Nasir, the Anglican pastor in Nablus at the time,  and his wife Sa’ada Shatarah.   She studied at St. Mary’s School in Jerusalem and was amongst the first Palestinian women university graduates, as she got her B.A. from the American University of Beirut in 1933.   She was probably one of her kind as head of an organization who had resigned in her life time,  against the norm in the Arab world  of  holding on to a seat “until death do us part”.  But then Lizzy was a confirmed non conformist,  so she was able to enjoy being honored in her life time  by the board, staff, and children of Rawdat El-Zuhur  and her friends in July 1986.  The Elizabeth Nasir Trust Fund was established from donations in her honor on that occasion,  and donations in lieu of flowers for her funeral were added to that fund as well.   Celebrations for the 50th anniversary of Rawdat El-Zuhur will take place on the 4 th and 5th of April 2002, and a special musical will be put up in honor of the memory of  Elizabeth Nasir.


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Blessing this ministry to children at

Web Author E-Mail:quillzee@yahoo.com  Begun in 1997