Welcome to the Palestinian House of Friendship (PHF).

The Palestinian House of Friendship is a non-profit, non-governmental, politically independent humanitarian community organization in the West Bank city of Nablus, dedicated to serving the needs of children, adolescents, and their families.  Its service area includes the city of Nablus, nearby villages, and three surrounding refugee camps.  PHF promotes the ideals of democracy, human rights, peaceful resolution of conflict, and love for the other.  Its mission is to create a Palestinian civil society supporting a new generation of young people who are educated in the values of democracy and are ready to become the future leaders of that society.

PHF offers a variety of activities ranging from civic education to programs in democracy and local culture. They include workshops, a summer camp, lectures, seminars, concerts, folklore festivals, women’s singing groups, a Girl Scout troop, a skateboard park, and an entrepreneurial center in the village of Asira al Shamaliya. PHF is dependent on the generous contributions of local and international supporters and receives no funding from the Palestinian Authority.

Smiling Faces summer camp is PHF’s crowning achievement. It reaches out to children and adolescents from families that are socio-economically marginalized, including single-parent families, those with unemployed parents, and families whose parents are in Israeli prisons. The camp gives these children a taste of childhood pleasures, protects them from delinquency, and gives their families a sense of hope.

The camp serves boys and girls, ages 6 to 14, with older adolescents trained to help staff the camp.  Activities include painting, crafts, music, drama, dance, computer training, sports, skateboarding, and a “green hands initiative” in which children learn to nurture indigenous plants.  These activities are taught within a framework of conflict resolution and mediation, as children and young people build self-respect and respect for others.