Grow in Christ and be a Life giver

This year’s Special Project with the Methodist Women’s Fellowship is supporting our partner Department of Service to Palestinian Refugees in Jordan (DSPR)

DSPR is part of the Middle East Council of Churches. It grew out of the local Christian response to the first refugees from Palestine in 1948. Since then DSPR Jordan has helped waves of refugees from Palestine, Iraq and Syria. As well as Jordan, DSPR has local area committees in Galilee, Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank (Including East Jerusalem)

CWS has been supporting and building our relationship with DSPR since 1949, when it sent its first grant from the 1494 Christmas appeal.

Integral to their work is advocacy for Palestinians and working towards just peace.

DSPR reflects the Christian Core Values in its witness and Diakonia in partnership with local and global actors, to foster and advance socio-economic conditions of Palestinians and the marginalized through active contribution to improve living conditions, through providing health education, environmental, economic, social and humanitarian programs for the realization of basic human rights.

Services DSPR provides:

• High quality health clinics for mothers and children in Gaza and in Jordan’s Madaba camp
• A nursery and kindergarten in Lebanon, along with after school tutoring, English courses and literacy classes
• Trauma counselling and psychological support programmes for children and mothers
• Emergency assistance and support, especially to new refugee families

Psychosocial intervention is a health activity provided by DSPR, they reach out to hundreds of traumatized women and children through provision of psychosocial support following assessment and screening with referrals and follow ups as needed. This service has been provided for 7,000 people

In 2022 DSPR’s five primary heath care clinics in Gaza and Jordan cared for 30,000 patients

580 young people attended vocational training programmes, while 480 Syrian refugees followed the Syrian High School curriculum.

DSPR has supported refugees in Gaza and Lebanon with 4,000 emergency cash vouchers and 1,000 food vouchers

 

Madaba Refugee Camp

Madaba refugee camp was founded in 1956 for Palestinian Refugees. It is now home to many Syrian refugees who fled the conflict in Syria.

Around 5,000 mothers and children have been cared for through the clinics primary health care, including medical checks, ultrasounds, medical referrals, newborn babies kits and awareness sessions

DSPR reports that the clinics improve overall early childhood health for those that attend, and also pick up on special needs, such as a child who was diagnosed with severe anaemia and received lifesaving specialist help after attending a clinic open day.

 

According to the United Nations, a Palestinian refugee is any person whose “normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948 and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict.” The descendants of these people also meet the criteria, making a total of 6 million people. Jordan is host to the largest population of Palestinian refugees with more than 2 million Palestinians and 702,768 refugees from Syria and elsewhere.

 

CWS values its relationships with MWF for their commitment to fundraising for the life-giving work our partners do.

“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it” Hebrews 13:2