Kickstarter

Peace family, friends and strangers!

Click on my video on youtube to get a visual explanation of what I'm doing this summer: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8jk1hRNjjI

My name is Renee Floresca and I am an 8th grade New York City educator. For the past four years I have dedicated my life to my students in the Bronx writing lesson plans, creating units, designing projects, organizing, cleaning, communicating with parents, grading… and this letter would last much longer if I continued on listing the duties of a teacher, but I wouldn’t do that to you! I am writing to you because I am going to have an amazing opportunity this summer working with youth in Israel and I want YOU to be a part of it. Yes, YOU!

 

I am reaching out to you today because I will be hosting free writing and dance workshops in Israel with an organization called Project Harmony Israel. This organization works with students at a school called Hand in Hand, which focuses on teaching students of Jewish and Arab descent co-existence in a very segregated Israel.

 

Project Harmony is a 4-week English language summer camp that aims to create a safe social space for Arab and Jewish children from Jerusalem to relate to one another in the most basic way--not as citizens of a politically tense state or members of a religious group, but as peers. Project Harmony seeks to plant the seed with children who, despite being born into a deeply divided society, are given the chance to imagine their community as one rooted in a shared experience, intellectual freedom, and social awareness.  This is our vision of peace.  

 

I will be hosting 2 different workshops to build and create unity with the students. One workshop will focus on allowing female youth that I work with to create an anthology of creative writing based on their experiences living in Jerusalem. The theme of the workshop is peace and what it means to the people that I work with. The other workshop I will be teaching is a hip hop dance workshop and the students will end the workshop with a performance for the school. I am humbled to be working with both Project Harmony and the youth living in Israel.

 

A ticket to Israel currently costs about $1400. I am asking for a monetary donation, big or small to cover the cost of me getting to where I need to go. Unfortunately, Project Israel is not paying for flight, living expenses or the workshops I plan to teach. My services and workshops will be free for all the youth, but I just need to get there! So, if you’re feeling giving, please support my adventure to educate through peace, dancing, and writing in Israel.  

 

With your donation I will purchase my ticket to Israel and send you back a gift to pay the peace forward to someone else. I also promise to continue working with underserved youth, share my skills and talents as a teacher and share my stories and experiences through writing, film and Facebook (oh, technology).

 

Any donation is greatly appreciated, as all the work I will be doing there will be volunteer work. If you have any questions, please email me at Floresca.Renee@gmail.com.

 

Thank you so much for your support,

Ms. Renee Floresca

 

 

peace kapayapaan shalom salam