Women's Rights Program

My name is Johanna, I am 31 years old, and I was born and raised in Stockholm, Sweden. I came to Palestine and the Excellence Center to study Arabic and to participate in the Women’s Rights Program for a duration of two weeks. It only took me a few days before I started to really feel at home at the Excellence Center. I also felt very welcome and comfortable with my host family right away, and it was perfect that I could be placed with a family that did not speak any English, since this gave me all the more opportunity to practice my Arabic. Staying with a host family has been among my most valuable and pleasant experiences here.

About half way through my volunteering program I decided to sign up for intensive Arabic lessons, instead of only taking three hours of lessons per week, since I wanted to focus more on the language. I have been extremely content with my teacher, Mahmood, both with his choice of material and his methods of teaching. He has tailored the lessons to my needs so that I have got the most possible out of them, while I have also enjoyed our time together in the classroom immensely, laughing and learning at the same time.

Overall, I have only positive things to say about the people at the Excellence Center, both the staff and the volunteers. There is a large diversity of backgrounds and life experience among the volunteers, but the one thing everyone at the center seems to have in common, staff as well as volunteers, is their passion for learning and growing. Sometimes this environment that is so full of life and inspiration is in stark contrast to the stories we have heard during visits to local organizations, from people we have met here, and from the local teachers at the center. We have met with activists who document crimes committed by Israeli soldiers, people who run an organization that gives women in the areas most affected by the occupation a chance to learn how to build a business model and to fund their projects, and we have visited the Fawwar camp on the outskirts of Hebron, learning about living conditions in the camp and talking to a family that lives there.

Since I came here only for two weeks, and the weekends are the only time to travel outside of Hebron, I have not had the opportunity to visit a lot of places in the West Bank. I went to Ramallah twice and also did a quick visit to Nablus, but it was on a Saturday, so there was a lot of traffic and I needed to catch the last minibus back to Hebron, which did not leave me with a lot of time to explore the city. However, what I always appreciate the most when staying in other countries is spending time with locals, which I have had many opportunities to do here. Last time in Ramallah, I met someone who works as a paramedic for the Red Cross, and he told me a story of when he had an Israeli soldier point a gun to his head because he refused to hand over the keys to the ambulance he was driving. He showed me a photo that someone took of the incident.

I cannot choose one favorite experience from my stay in Palestine, or one favorite thing about this country. I can list some concrete things that I love: the people, the landscape, the food. Of course, the atmosphere at the Excellence Center and the sense of belonging and connection that I have had with the staff and the volunteers are an important reason why I have loved it here. But in the end, the reason I need to come back is simply in how I feel, which I also cannot quite describe. There are also still a lot of places and things to see and many people left to meet. If I did not have to go back to Sweden to work, I would without a doubt have extended my stay.