Last night I passed by the 47th Palestinian Heritage Exhibition thats organized by the Palestinian Culture Center. If like me you hadn’t heard of the center before, here is a little brief they emailed me:
The Palestinian Culture Center aims to support needy families and preserve the rich and vibrant culture of Palestine. It does this by encouraging ladies to continue a beautiful handicraft, embroidery, which has been in Palestine for hundreds of years and ensuring that the tradition is carried on to the younger generation.
The Center has been in operation since the early 1970’s in Kuwait and then moved to Jordan after 1990. Today, the PCC, has over 450 women from the Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan working on these beautiful pieces. For these women, the payment they receive is a great support for their families. The PCC also aims at supporting education and helps various schools and education programs in Palestine as well as needy families.
As a charity organization we use a simple rule in all our pricing. Thirty-three percent of the sale cost of an item is given to the woman that produces the work, thirty-three percent goes towards covering the cost of the item, and the remaining amount is distributed to schools, orphanages and needy families mostly in Palestine.
The exhibition turned out to be pretty interesting with a lot of handicraft and embroidery available to purchase. I got a little bit of a tour by one of the organizers because I really didn’t know much about Palestinian culture. One of the interesting things I learned was that the traditional Palestinian patterns used in embroidery are actually inspired by nature. It’s basically nature turned into abstract geometric shapes. Also back in the day, embroidery was important for Palestinian women because it was a way for them to attract eligible bachelors since they would make their dresses themselves.
Other than handicraft and embroidery, the exhibition also has artwork, books, jewelry and food for sale. So if you’re interested in checking the exhibition out, it’s running till this Thursday. For more information you can check out the event page [Here] or their instagram account @palestiniancc
