Marhaba Europe Organizers’ Kit

The coordinators and participants of Marhaba Europe have put those thoughts for you to share in providing support to the project. Despite that some of those needs are not new to you, and due to their vitality for the tour’s and participants’ goals and sustainability we felt a need to make a final checklist of them.

Connecting us: Meetings with people and the media is one of our goals. The intention of the tour is to extend contacts beyond the "usual suspects", we would love to meet all kinds of groups, such as feminists, environmentalists, queers, grassroots unions, students, squats, Palestine and Iraq solidarity groups, etc. We would also like to meet progressive people from more official circles (such as city council members, local members of parliaments, etc), and speak with the press. We would expect local groups to organize

• One openly publicized public presentation (or more)
• Meeting/s with the press and alternative media outlets
• Meeting/s with local groups
• Where possible we would like to have meetings with schools and universities

Putting us Online: Each group will have a laptop and a digital video/photo camera to use in their work that yields Internet access as well; thus it is needed from every hosting group to provide internet availability. Internet will be needed for the activists to follow up their work, send out reports, coordinate the tour’s course and upcoming meetings, and staying in touch with their loved ones.

Feeding Marhaba Europe: We need local groups to provide food and accommodation (in private houses it is fine - we are friendly  and carry sleeping bags). One of the activists in each group is vegan and we hope that leaving out some food without animal products should not be a problem.

As you know by now, we need your help for practically everything ! We also need it with the general costs of the tours. We got a grant from the YOUTH program of the EU for this project, but they will only cover 50% of the costs, and we cannot cover the rest without your help. We hope that local groups in each location that the tour visits in Western Europe will be able to contribute around 150 euros or more - and to fill our gas tank when needed, to make it possible for groups in Eastern Europe to host the tour without having to give any contribution other than food and board.

Since this will not be enough to cover all the costs … every group of activists visiting your town will possibly have some video/ print materials and some handicrafts made by Palestinian refugee women in Lebanon and Palestine. The print material includes a supplement reader that will be sold to raise money for its cost and partially funding the tour. The handicrafts include a variety of traditional Palestinian embroidery items that will also be sold to raise money for the refugee women who made them and the tour. The video materials will be available for public screenings if a video projector is provided.

Extending traces: We will be carrying a selection of activist videos from all over the place, and we will be collecting some on the way (both in DVD and VHS formats). All this will be available for sharing ... so get your burners ready.

Crossing tongues: For easier communication we need you to provide translators from English to your language - and vice versa - during the meetings where needed/ applicable.

Being the media: We are hoping to produce a documentary about the whole tour and along its course of events taking place in communities we are visiting. We are looking forward to all the meetings and exchanges we are going to have, and in order to put this together we appreciate any video/audio/visual documentation we can get. We will be doing some of our own but your input and support is always appreciated.

Meeting ends: After the tours, in Easter 2005, there will be a final meeting where we hope that all groups visited during the tour will come to discuss common projects and the follow-up process.