Partners - Middle East - Palestine

Gaza : Qatan Centre for the Child

This center is a project of the Qattan Foundation and wants to promote the access to information in Gaza and to fill up a gap in the traditional education. The children can now use a library with more than 80,000 works and from different information services. The goal is to incite the curiousness of the children, to broaden their knowledge and to facilitate their contact with other cultures. The centre has opened end 2005 and holds out rather well, despite the bad living conditions in Gaza.
 
The Qattan Foundation has now gotten the plan to erect a music school for Gaza on a short notice. Music Fund will therefore be an important partner and is engaged to donate the music instruments, but also to organize trainings for technicians-restorers of music instruments. We hope to be able to start with this already in the summer of 2008, through the organization of a "hospital for music instruments": a ten days during workshop to (learn to) repair the wind instruments and the guitars that people of Gaza can bring then to give them a "first aid" treatment. During this "hospital", we will also give an initiation in restoration techniques and give the chance to give the talented ones for this profession a training in Belgium for a couple of months.
 
 

Ramallah : Al Kamandjâti

The association has started in 2002 as an initiative from Ramzi Abu Radwan, who comes from the refugee camp of Al Amari from Ramallah and who was later on a Palestinian student at the Conservatoire National de Région d'Angers. Since then, the association has grown and they have started several music schools for underprivileged children in Palestine. Al Kamandjâti works in refugee camps on the West Bank, in Gaza and in Southern Libanon.
 
Since 2006, Music Fund organizes workshops for the restoration of instruments in their head school in Ramallah and talented youngsters are being invited to Europe for following a perfection course in a factory of a Belgian or a French instruments restorer. Al Kamandjâti has gotten the biggest donation of Music Fund until now of music instruments. It gives the organization the possibility to also lend out music instruments to children and youngsters who normally do not have the means for this.
 
 

Ramallah: Baremboïm-Said Foundation

The Foundation, created in Sevilla in 2004, has as basic principle that music should be an unconditional part of society. According to this principle, different projects have already been developed in the Middle East:- the creation of a youth orchestra,- the development of infrastructure for music education with a view to make music education accessible for everyone,- contribute to the creation of artistically and musical activities.The different projects take place in Ramallah, Nablus, Bethlehem and East Jerusalem.
 
Music Fund does not support the Foundation itself but does support various projects of the Foundation in the Middle East. Some of our best music instruments have been donated to BSF, because they also include the best young musicians from the region.
 
 

Nablus : Nablus the Culture

The organization wants to encourage the cultural life in Nablus by promoting music. The center receives yearly different local and international artists. Music lessons are organized here in cooperation with the Barenboim-Said Foundation.
 
Musicians of Ictus and "Het Collectief" have given master classes a couple of times and Music Fund has given a significant donation of music instruments, with which the music school could definitively start in 2006. Since 2007, Music Fund organizes for Nablus The Culture a training in the restoration and tuning of pianos. From April 2008- for the duration of a whole year - the piano expert, Olivier Marie, will be sent to Nablus to train different piano technicians on the spot for Nablus The Culture - and also for Al Kamandjâti in Ramallah.
 
 

PROJECT OLIVIER MARIE (april-december 2008)

The music schools in the Palestinian territories have since 2005 received pianos from Music Fund, but miss the know-how to repair and tune them. In the whole of the Westbank there is only one piano-tuner and technician, an old man from East-Jerusalem, who has difficulties moving around. In July 2007 Music Fund sent the piano-expert Olivier Marie to the region to give an initiation course in Nablus and Ramallah. He taught a number of interested young Palestinians related to the music schools there.
 
But it takes a long time to learn how to tune and repair a piano. This is why Olivier Marie proposed to Music Fund to take one year of his time to go live and work in the region and train several young piano technicians. Olivier Marie about his project: « The music schools in Palestine are as small paradises in the middle of very tense surroundings. The pianos of these schools are being played a lot and need regular fine-tuning and small reparations in order to keep them in good condition. But there are no piano tuners/technicians in the region and the Palestinians depend on foreign technicians who come by once and a while. I have already initiated several young Palestinians during my stay in July 2007. They showed real talent and a lot of motivation to learn this profession. My presence during a full year will surely allow me to train one or several of them to become piano technicians. This would then surely have a serious impact on the quality of the pianos available in the region, and as a consequence on the quality of the music education and performing. »
 
The total cost involved in sending Olivier Marie for one full year to Nablus and Ramallah, would be 26.000 Euro (a basic fee to get by, travel costs, purchase and transportation of tools and material for the workshops in the region, insurance and cost for local housing).
Projects in partnership with Palestine
donation of instruments
initiation workshops
stages

The pictures
Don't miss the photo album of the first transport to the Middle East in December 2006 and of the workshops given in Nablus and Ramallah in July 2007.