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← The British Shalom-Salaam Trust

2024-02-29-accounts

British Shalom-salaam Trust Crossing Borders for Peace Annual Report & Accounts aam THE BRITISHSHALOM-SALAAMTRUST Charity No. 1103211 March 2023- February 2024

From Our Chair

What an extraordinary and horrific year this has been.

BSST’s financial year March 2023 to February 2024 has been divided almost in half by the appalling events of 7th October and then the unimaginable near destruction of Gaza, with most of its population displaced and tens of thousands of civilian deaths. As I write this in October 2024, there is no sign of an end to the Israeli attacks, which have now extended into Lebanon, while settler and IDF violence intensifies in the West Bank.

So what has BSST been doing this year?

Up until October 7[th] , our grant giving followed its normal pattern, except that in the West Bank, attacks both by settlers and the IDF became even more frequent and fierce in their violence. This caused us to launch a successful emergency appeal for Jenin, so we could repeatedly enable the Al Tafawk supplementary school in Jenin Refugee Camp to repair their premises, which have been repeatedly vandalised by the IDF.

Once war started, Gaza became our first priority and we suspended many regular applications. We had a very heartwarming response to our appeal for our “Trauma Fund” for Gaza, expecting that our help would be needed for the ‘ Day After’ , which would surely come soon. However, a year on, that Day After seems no nearer.

Despite frequent power outages, this last year we have succeeded in contacting most of our grantees in Gaza, many of whom had suffered losses of family members, premises being damaged or lost entirely, and personal displacement. They have demonstrated extraordinary resilience, using their skills and experience as community activists to source food and other essentials to distribute to families, including refugees from Northern Gaza, who arrived at their door with nothing but the clothes they were wearing. Clowns and playleaders who, before the war had been bringing children a little fun, made valiant efforts to continue to entertain whichever children were around in any space that could be found among the destruction. We have been able to provide some financial support to Gaza groups, but like other developmental projects supporting work in Palestine, our funds for rebuilding communities await a time when we will be able to distribute them again.

Within Israel, groups such as Parents against Child Detention, Kafa Association, Humans without Borders and Negev Coexistence Forum all experienced increased demand because of the war on Gaza. A major problem has been that many Palestinians were immediately thrown out of work and their families have been left destitute.

Nevertheless, talking to our partners in Palestine and Israel gives us some hope to cling on to. Our expressions of solidarity are hugely valued, and we owe it to those ‘on the ground’ to continue our work, with faith that the ’Day After’ will become a reality and we will fully use all the funds our many supporters have so generously donated.

Thanks to all our donors and supporters for standing with us.

Dr Gill Yudkin Chair, BSST October 2024

Front cover: “Continuing to learn, a temporary classroom in Gaza”. Photo by Palestine Trauma Centre Back cover: “Aftermath of a demolition”. Photo taken from the Villages Group Facebook page

Who we are

The British Shalom-Salaam Trust is the only British Jewish grant-giving charity working solely across ‘Israel-Palestine-Golan’. This is the name BSST uses for the entire territory we cover: the state of Israel since 1948, and all the land - Gaza and the West Bank including East Jerusalem, and Golan - occupied by Israel since 1967.

Our grants policy: challenging oppression – bringing justice and hope

BSST supports groups in Israel-Palestine-Golan that seek creative and practical solutions to the needs of their communities. We see ourselves as enablers not prescribers. We do not impose our own programmes: we respond to needs identified by the groups we work with.

BSST favours small grassroots projects and is very willing to help the many groups tackling contentious issues and those overlooked by major funders.

We don’t seek out beneficiaries: they find us mostly by word of mouth, occasionally via internet searches. The result is our eclectic portfolio: some 600 grants have gone to around 200 organisations since BSST started out in 2004.

Most BSST grants go to Palestinian, Jewish and joint groups, but currently we also support Golan Syrians, East Jerusalem gypsies, and African asylum seekers and migrant workers who now live in Israel.

Graffiti on the Israel’s so-called ‘separation wall’. Photo N Wayne

Our Jewish identity defines our work and purpose. We seek:

We also recognise that the rights of Palestinian refugees must be a key part of any just peace settlement. However, with our limited resources, BSST has to limit its grant-giving to people and projects within Israel-Palestine-Golan.

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How we work

We deliver public benefit:

BSST itself has neither employees nor an office. Its volunteer trustees carry out all functions, working mostly online. This ensures that in a normal year, at least 98% of our expenditure goes on charitable grants. Unavoidable administrative overheads – bank charges, minimal postage and printing – usually make up just 1-2% of BSST’s costs.

Many BSST grant recipients employ paid staff and possess Israeli or Palestinian legal status analogous to that of British charities. However, we also support informal, entirely volunteer-run groups with minimal infrastructure that are the most likely to struggle for mainstream funding. We do need applicants to have email access, but as we have been contacted successfully by tented desert communities without mains electricity or wi-fi, we are confident that our online reliance is not an obstacle, even to very deprived groups.

Our application process is simple: we post grant criteria on our website, provide an online, user-friendly application form, take requests yearround and make decisions in weeks.

Machsom Watch monitor border crossings.

BSST necessarily operates at arm’s length, so we have developed evaluation polices and guidelines to review our beneficiary groups. As well as measuring applications against our own criteria, we check other sources: internet presence, newspaper reports,

briefings from other groups and individuals in Israel-Palestine-Golan. We have also designed report-back procedures for the end of each funding period, using a straightforward standard form adjusted individually for each project. And we consult our Advisory Group whose members have specialist knowledge and close ties with Israel-Palestine.

Finally, where possible, we meet grant and post box recipient groups. Trustees visiting IsraelPalestine-Golan include trips (at our own expense) to see projects that we support.

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What we give

In 2023-4 successful applicant groups received a maximum grant of 25,000 shekels per year (its sterling equivalent ranging from £6,000 down to £5,100, depending on Israel’s very unstable exchange rate), while our current limit on donations that we make to general appeals is 5,000 shekels. BSST’s own emergency appeals, do not apply a grant cap.

Many organisations are never able to replace our funding, so BSST provides repeat grants year after year. By contrast, for some groups BSST’s early support delivers the crucial pump-priming that eventually enables them to become independent of our assistance.

----- Start of picture text -----
Women's Rights Art & Culture
8% 5%
Civic Engagement 10%
Children &
Education
35%
Human Rights
31%
Health
11%
BSST Expenditure 2023-24
----- End of picture text -----

How we raise funds

BSST has funders and beneficiaries of many backgrounds. Thousands of people have donated to us: Jews, Christians, Muslims, and those asserting no religious belief or identity. Faith organisations and peace groups also support us, and we raise significant sums from other charitable trusts.

As we have no endowment, every penny we give away we must first raise: our lifeblood is donations. We are immensely grateful to all our supporters, whose generosity enables us to assist those local organisations seeking in many ways to build a just peace in Israel-PalestineGolan. This year, major donations to our general funds came from many individuals and the following organisations:

Amberstone Trust, Balcome Trust, Blue Moon Trust, CB&HH Taylor 1984 Trust, Disrupt Foundation, Eleanor Rathbone Trust, Fulton Charitable Trust, The Green Room, IHL Human Rights Fund, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, Jewish Voice for Labour, John & Susan Bowers Fund, Just Trust, Nancy Wishart Charitable Trust, Network for Social Change, Orr Mackintosh Foundation/Sharegift, Southall Trust and two trusts that asked not to be publicly identified.

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Why we matter

ro While we do not promote any specific ‘solution’ to current inequalities and injustices – that is for the parties involved to negotiate – BSST sees its role as helping people on the ground to create the building blocks for a more humane society and a fair and lasting peace between the communities of Israel-Palestine-Golan

ren re BSST has much evidence that we make a real difference to the groups we support and to their communities – from project reports, discussions with groups we fund, films, photographs, personal accounts, news stories and visits that we make.

rex re Fe At a purely practical level, if donors wish to reach local campaigners and activists in Israel-Palestine-Golan who are trying to strengthen their own communities, then giving to BSST is simple and effective . Our trustees have built up specialist knowledge and an extensive network of contacts and are skilled in making informed judgments about groups that other donors might find difficult to evaluate. We have strong relationships with many groups we fund, and we know that overwhelmingly they deliver on the work they have promised.

rex fe Fre Fe Our Jewish identity and commitment to a better future for all the people of Israel-Palestine-Golan is important to BSST, but not only to us. Often the groups we work with make it clear that, much as they value our grants, they equally value who we are and our aspirations for their lives in the years to come.

Children in Gaza in happier times: the summer camp run by Future Association for Development & the Environment

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Projects BSST supported in 2023-24

AFAQ JADEEDA ASSOCIATION (New Horizons) is a community group serving Gaza's Nuseirat refugee camp, where over 80,000 people live in extreme poverty. It has long delivered social welfare, education and leisure activities. This year BSST funded its summer programme, providing fun and free lunches for 150 of the most deprived four- to five-year-olds, while their mothers learned parenting skills and how to support their children through stress and anxiety caused by Israel’s bombing raids. Taking place before October 7[th] and the huge assaults on Gaza ever since, the camp represented the last period of simple joy and safety that the children and their mothers have experienced. Since that date, BSST is relieved to report that it has managed to have occasional email contact with AFAQ JADEEDA’s director.

AHNA HON (We Are Here) is a community organisation working in an area of Palestinian villages northwest of Nazareth. Via vocational training, therapeutic and leisure activities, it aims to assist local Palestinians with disabilities build their self-esteem, develop friendships, learn how to live more independently and integrate into wider society. BSST helped fund a carpentry project training participants to produce wooden goods for sale, and to acquire a skill set enabling them to enter the job market.

AROUS EL BAHAR (Bride of the Sea) is a Jaffa-based Palestinian women’s group, tackling the huge social problems – unemployment, deprivation, domestic violence, low educational achievement, crime and drugs – hidden behind the touristy glitz of the city’s redeveloped port area. Nearly 60% of Palestinian families in Jaffa live in poverty, with Palestinian women suffering double discrimination. This year AROUS EL BAHAR maintained its sewing and shop businesses and its free legal aid clinic tackling employment and family problems, genderbased violence and sexual abuse. Plus, it expanded its financial literacy courses and established a new programme for women entrepreneurs. BSST contributed to core costs.

facebook.com/arous.elbahar.jaffa

COMMUNITY PEACEMAKER TEAMS (CPT), (previously ‘Christian Peacemaker Teams’) is an international body supporting peace worker teams in the West Bank. Embedded in rural areas of the West Bank where the Palestinian residents are under constant threat from IDF and settler incursions, the peace workers aim to provide protection by their very presence and by their training in nonviolent direct action. In CPT’s words: reducing violence by 'getting in the way'. BSST provided its Post Box Service.

cpt.org/programs/Palestine

DOMARI SOCIETY OF GYPSIES IN JERUSALEM serves 2000 members of one of IsraelPalestine’s smallest communities. Poor, nearly invisible, and with minimal education, their disadvantage is cemented by hostility from those around them. Domari men struggle to get work, the women are trapped by economic dependency and male violence, while their children are bullied at school and abandon education early. The DOMARI SOCIETY’s welcoming Centre provides homework space and after-school tutoring for the children, plus literacy courses and vocational training for the adult women. BSST helped fund tuition in core subjects – English, Arabic, Maths, and, for the first time, Hebrew - along with tram fares and a meal for each child. After October 7[th] , when we learned that all the Domari men had lost their jobs and their families were destitute, BSST funded emergency food packages.

domarisociety.com

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ELHAWAKEER ASSOCIATION FOR COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT is a Nazareth-based group supporting Palestinian farmers, especially women. It teaches them how to improve their farming and business skills and to work more productively by pooling their resources. BSST supported its olive harvesting project, purchasing four small olive picking machines, so the villagers of Qifin on the West Bank side of ‘the Wall’ could band together and bring in their olive crops rapidly during the brief period that Israel allows access to their land on the Israeli side. After training, the farmers were well on target to start harvesting but following October 7[th] , the IDF barred them completely from entering their fields within Israel. ELHAWAKEER told us that those who tried were “either shot or arrested or physically blocked”.

FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE confronts the failure of Israel’s education system in teaching IsraelPalestine history. Tight state control creates an unchallengeable ‘narrative’, where critical thought is discouraged. By contrast, FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE provides a platform for thinking, learning and changing attitudes among both experienced and trainee teachers. Together with partner teacher training institutions, it offers degree modules and professional development programmes examining Palestinians’ and Jews’ different understanding, experience and beliefs. Each course is jointly led by Jewish and Palestinian women facilitators and serves equal numbers of Palestinian and Jewish women participants. BSST contributed to core costs.

friendshipvillage.org.il

FUTURE ASSOCIATION FOR FRIENDSHIP AND THE ENVIRONMENT (FADE) is a community group in Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp whose annual summer camp for children and mothers has been supported by BSST several times before. After a COVID enforced break, the camp resumed, providing a summer of enjoyment for 100 children aged six to fifteen. Once again, for children in Gaza, this project proved to be their last experience of happiness and release from fear before October 7[th] . Since then, BSST has succeeded in keeping in contact with FADE’s Director and has learned that against all the odds the Centre continues to function, as a place local people can seek advice, practical and emotional support, get their phones charged, take shelter and continue to have some sense of community.

facebook.com/the.futuer.gaza

GOOD SHEPHERD COLLECTIVE (GSC) is based in the South Hebron Hills, opposing home demolition, supporting villages under attack, planting olive trees, running a guesthouse, holding workshops on Bedouin history and culture. BSST provided its Post Box service.

goodshepherdcollective.org

HAIFA ASSOCIATION FOR CHILDREN WITH DIABETES (HACD) is a Gaza-based project, supporting children with Type 1 (insulin dependent) diabetes. It serves those children who live outside the refugee camps, for whom the Palestinian Ministry of Health, not UNWRA, is responsible. As the Ministry’s support is nowhere near sufficient, volunteer-run HACD helps fill the gap in the availability of insulin injection pens, testing strips and glucometers. It also provides psychological and diabetes-management support. BSST paid for clinical supplies and has managed to maintain contact with HACD since October 7[th]

facebook.com/hacdhaifa

HOPE FLOWERS SCHOOL serves a very deprived population just outside Bethlehem. Many pupils live in refugee camps and a high proportion have special needs. The school provides extensive social care alongside a regular primary education programme. Like everywhere in the West Bank, violent interventions by the IDF have ramped up since October 7[th] . BSST provided some emergency funding after the IDF blockaded the school, nearby homes were demolished and the children were severely traumatised

hopeflowers.org

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HUMANS WITHOUT BORDERS (HWB) is an Israeli Jewish volunteer group supporting West Bank Palestinian families with children needing advanced medical treatment in Israel or in occupied East Jerusalem. HWB volunteers drive the children between checkpoint and hospital, assist with language and cultural difficulties, visit those who become in-patients, and help with accompanying relatives’ expenses - food, lodgings, etc. Often HWB pays for essential medical costs – equipment, medicines, routine hospital charges – which, increasingly, the Palestinian Authority won’t cover. BSST contributed to costs not covered by HWB’s volunteers themselves.

humans-without-borders.org

ISHA L’ISHA - HAIFA FEMINIST CENTRE is the oldest grassroots feminist organisation in Israel. BSST assisted its Women Without Status project – helping victims of trafficking, asylum seekers, undocumented workers, and women whose legal or financial status is dependent on their relationship with an Israeli man. These women don’t qualify for state health or welfare services, lack employment and other civil rights, and are at high risk of sexual and domestic violence. The project runs a 24-hour helpline, ensures women know their rights, provides emergency finance for food, rent, even abortions, and helps them develop skills, especially Hebrew language competence, to improve their employability.

facebook.com/IshaLishaHaifaFeministCenter

KAFA ASSOCIATION FOR SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE NEGEV supports the people of Rahat, Israel’s largest Bedouin city, and home to over 70,000 Bedouin belonging to dozens of clans. Previously self-contained desert communities, the clans have been forced together into a crowded urban environment by the Israeli government. Despite unemployment, communal tensions and crime, KAFA has forged a vibrant community organisation to tackle Rahat’s endemic poverty and hopelessness. BSST once again funded its Bedouin Rights Centre, providing locals with practical advice and representation over day-to-day issues such as social welfare, residency, inheritance, debt and travel permits. BSST also provided emergency support after October 7[th] as some of the city’s residents were killed and others kidnapped.

KOTOF EL KHAIR ASSOCIATION is a community group in the central Gaza city of Deir elBalah. Its impressive range of services used to include cultural events, a safe children’s play space, women’s rights workshops, disability training, free healthcare access days, summer camps and humanitarian aid. BSST funded an ambitious project to enhance KOTOF’s kindergarten which served 100 children. Broadband was installed, and equipment purchased: smart screens to aid interactive learning, laptops, a photocopier, colour printer and camera. The outside play area was also upgraded to make it safer and more fun to use. Remarkably, four months after October 7[th] KOTOF sent us a brilliant report showing how the project had been implemented. Since October 7[th] BSST has stayed in touch with its Director and the group is still providing services to its local community and to refugees from other parts of Gaza.

facebook.com/kotofAssociation

LADA’AT – CHOOSE WELL offers information, support and counselling on contraception and unplanned pregnancy. It also runs healthy sexuality workshops for teenagers, trains medical and psychosocial professionals, and lobbies policy makers. Based in West Jerusalem, it serves thousands of women annually – secular and religious Jews, Palestinians, African asylum-seekers, foreign workers and tourists. With BSST seedcorn funding and encouragement, since 2018 LADA’AT’s previous inaccessibility to Palestinian women has been replaced by a very successful ‘Arabic Department’ providing a full portfolio of services. BSST was pleased to contribute to the costs of expanding this department during 2023.

ladaat.org.il/en

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AL MARSAD – ARAB HUMAN RIGHTS CENTRE IN THE GOLAN HEIGHTS is the only Syrian human rights group in occupied Golan. When Israel captured Golan from Syria in 1967, 90% of residents fled; those 28,000 Syrians left live on 5% of Golan’s territory, 25,000 Israeli settlers in the other 95%. Israel’s 1981 annexation of Golan forced AL MARSAD to register as an Israeli NGO, so it cannot access EU financial support available to Palestinian groups. It still provides an impressive portfolio of services; advocacy, legal support, local and international lobbying and campaigning, cultural enrichment, and education to preserve Syrian-Arab identity and remind us of Israel’s forgotten occupation. BSST provided a core grant and its Post Box service.

golan-marsad.org

MASAFER YATTA WRESTLING CLUB is a sports venture for boys living in the Masafer Yatta region, a place area without mains water, grid electricity or social facilities, and with residents under permanent threat of eviction by the Israeli state and violent harassment from Israeli settlers. The club is the initiative of wrestling enthusiast, Sam, from the Centre for Jewish NonViolence who, having lived for months in Palestinian homes as a ‘Human Rights Defender’, set it up to acknowledge the generosity of his villager hosts. BSST gave a grant for the boys’ kit and to pay visiting Palestinian wrestlers to provide some of the training. After a break following October 7[th] , BSST was happy to hear the club had started again in February 2024.

MIN EL BAHAR (Sea Holidays for Palestinian Children) is a Jewish/Palestinian project bringing joy to West Bank Palestinian families who are cut off from the sea. Entirely volunteerrun and on a tiny budget, every summer MIN EL BAHAR brings 1,500 of the most disadvantaged Palestinian children and mothers for a day at the beach. The children get a few hours’ freedom and fun, while their mothers relax together, briefly escaping domesticity and Occupation. The four Tel Aviv women organisers and their Palestinian colleagues across the West Bank recruit participants, arrange transport, entertainment and meals for dozens of day trips, and negotiate with the IDF so everyone gets through the checkpoints. Most funding comes from individuals, with BSST alone providing a regular major grant.

minelbahar.com

NEGEV COEXISTENCE FORUM (NCF) is the only grassroots Jewish/Palestinian organisation campaigning for Bedouin communities’ human and civil rights in the Negev/Naqab. Over half the desert’s 250,000 Bedouin have been forced into government-built towns, freeing their land for Jewish farming and residency. Yet many still resist compulsory urbanisation and even without basic infrastructure – water, electricity, roads, schools, healthcare – tens of thousands still inhabit traditional herding communities, most in ‘unrecognised’ villages. NCF opposes the Israeli state’s constant destruction of these villages, and helps residents rebuild dozens, even hundreds of times. BSST provided core funding.

dukium.org

NEW PROFILE is a feminist group opposed to the state’s glorification of military service. It is claimed that the IDF is Israel’s great leveller: NEW PROFILE disagrees, saying that widespread sexual harassment reinforces gender inequality, while soldiers from poor families often get the worst postings, ensuring continuing disadvantage at their service end. NEW PROFILE assists those who refuse conscription, either for health or conscientious objection reasons, providing free counselling, legal help, and anti-militarism training. It also cooperates with ‘refusenik’ and other anti-military groups. BSST provided core funding and its Post Box service.

newprofile.org

AL NOUR ASSOCIATION FOR COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT has long provided health, social and humanitarian support to the people of Deir al-Balah, a city in central Gaza. It has always been distinctive for its work integrating children with disabilities into the mainstream, and helping with emotional and behavioural problems, whether linked to disabilities or to the trauma of repeated military assaults on Gaza. BSST helped fund AL NOUR’s summer camp

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which provided art, theatre, sport and general play activities: this time it involved 100 children aged 4 to 6 years, and its timing ensured that it provided a precious period of joy and security before October 7[th] . Since then, the group has managed to continue supporting local people and refugees from other parts of Gaza and BSST has maintained email contact with them.

PALESTINE TRAUMA CENTRE (PTC) delivers family therapy, rapid intervention trauma relief, specialist psychotherapy and psychological training across Gaza. Its work includes its BSSTsupported FRIDAY OF JOY initiative, which brings drama, clowns, games, painting and music into schools, playgrounds and streets throughout Gaza, and enables PTC to identify children needing extra support. This year BSST repeated its FRIDAY OF JOY grant, which was supposed to run till August 2024 and would have helped PTC work with around 12,000 children over twelve months. This plan ceased to be possible from October 7[th] onwards. However, BSST has maintained contact with PTC and knows that the group is engaged in every kind of community support that it can organise, including emergency food distribution, and when possible, onstreet entertainment with children.

Ptcuk.org

PARENTS AGAINST CHILD DETENTION (PACD) is an Israeli parents group campaigning to end the violation of Palestinian children’s rights when they are arrested and detained. While Jewish settler children suspected of crime receive the protection afforded juveniles by Israel’s civil courts and by international law, their Palestinian counterparts, perhaps living only yards away, are tried in military courts where child protection laws don’t apply. Terrified, they are often held for weeks, are interviewed repeatedly without basic safeguards being applied and nearly always plead guilty to end their misery. PACD organises conferences, street rallies, online campaigns, exhibitions, public testimony readings, media articles and other publicity, seeking to get the true story of Palestinian child detention out to the Israeli public, and to change the law. BSST provided core funding.

pacd.org.il

PHYSICIANS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS – ISRAEL (PHRI) is a campaigning and service-providing medico-human rights organisation. It believes that everyone for whom the State is responsible – Israeli citizens of all ethnicities and communities, non-citizen residents, migrant workers, asylum-seekers, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and Syrians in Golan – are equally entitled to healthcare. BSST provided its Post Box service.

phr.org.il

RURAL WOMEN’S ASSOCIATION (RWA) works in the villages of the South Hebron Hills, within ‘Area C’ of the West Bank which is entirely subject to Israel’s control. For the last thirty years, Israel has used repeated home demolitions to try to force residents out. So far, these tactics have largely failed in the face of fierce women-led resistance from local groups like the RWA plus international pressure. The RWA also runs projects aimed at providing job opportunities for the village women, as well as education and leisure activities for the children. This year BSST paid for summer camps providing fun activities and healthy lunches for over a hundred children spread across three Bedouin villages.

theruralwomenassociation.wordpress.com

SADAKA REUT YOUTH PARTNERSHIP brings Palestinian and Jewish young people together to create social and political change. Focusing on marginalized groups – Bedouin Palestinians, Ethiopian, Russian and Mizrahi Jews – it is active in universities where Jewish/ Palestinian student interaction is rare. Promoting ‘a shared society based “on equality, solidarity, and justice’, SADAKA REUT directly confronts issues of conflict and unequal power. Previously, BSST gave several years pump priming finance. Now we provide our Post Box service

facebook.com/sadakareut

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ST JOHN EYE HOSPITAL is the only charitable provider of specialist eye care in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, treating patients regardless of ethnicity, religion or ability to pay. It benefits from the BSST Post Box service.

stjohneyehospital.org

AL TAFAWK CENTRE is a supplementary school and community centre serving the most deprived children in Jenin Refugee Camp. Most pupils come from extreme poverty: with homes unable to provide even basic shelter, and bread the only food, its pupils mostly live on the streets. Though the children attend UN schools, the education provided is poor and the Centre redresses its deficiencies, supporting pupils up to 16 in English, maths, Arabic, science, art, music and sport, while 3 to 6-year-olds enjoy the Refugee Camp’s only kindergarten. As well as education, the Centre offers warmth, love and safety and ensures each child receives a daily hot meal and is properly clothed. During this year, the IDF repeatedly invaded the Camp, and repeatedly vandalised the Centre, knocking holes in the building, destroying toys, educational materials, clothes supplies and medications. As well as its regular grant, BSST also ran an emergency appeal so that Al Tafawk’s Centre could be repaired and its stocks replenished.

instagram.com/altafawkcenter

TISHREEN is a Palestinian community group based in Taybeh, an economic and cultural hub city in the mostly Palestinian Triangle region of Israel. It focuses especially on women, young people and children and those engaged in the arts. Its passionate promotion of Triangle artists’ creative work enhances the community’s sense of self-worth and Palestinian cultural identity. TISHREEN’s Cultural Café – art gallery, coffee shop, workspaces – is central to its ambitious plan to become the go-to Triangle artists’ meeting space and resource. It is also somewhere the wider Palestinian community can meet, eat, and enjoy cultural and political discussion, book events, lectures, exhibitions, music, theatre, cinema etc. BSST provided core funding.

facebook.com/TishreenAssociation

VILLAGES GROUP is a small all-volunteer Jewish-Palestinian group long supported by BSST. It provides support and solidarity to Palestinians living in the South Hebron Hills and near Nablus and is deeply involved in the Palestinian villagers’ struggles to educate their children, prevent their land being seized and stop their homes being destroyed. This year, BSST provided its Post Box service, plus a grant for the VILLAGES GROUP to manage. This helped cover salary costs for Huda’s Kindergarten, in Khashem al-Daraj, an isolated south Hebron Bedouin village. Immensely popular, it serves some fifty children – from the village and surrounding hills – ensuring they are fully prepared to enter primary school.

villagesgroup.wordpress.com

+972 MAGAZINE is a free online publication owned by Israeli and Palestinian journalists committed to ending the Occupation, advancing human rights, and challenging the IsraelPalestine discourse, including reporting those voices overlooked by mainstream media. It has around a million annual readers and an international impact: the New York Times, CNN, the Guardian, BBC, and Le Monde Diplomatique pick up and sometimes collaborate in work on its carefully researched stories and regularly interview its writers, while embassies often request briefings. BSST provided its Post Box service.

972mag.com

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STATEMENT OF TRUSTEES’ RESPONSIBILITIES

The charity trustees are responsible for preparing a trustees’ annual report and financial statements in accordance with applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting Standards (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice). The law applicable to charities in England and Wales requires the charity trustees to prepare financial statements for each year which give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the charity and of its incoming resources and application of resources of the charity for that period.

In preparing the financial statements, the trustees are required to:

The trustees are responsible for keeping proper accounting records that disclose with reasonable accuracy at any time the financial position of the charity and enable them to ensure that the financial statements comply with the Charities Act 2011, the applicable Charities (Accounts and Reports) Regulations and the provisions of the Trust deed. They are also responsible for safeguarding the assets of the charity and taking reasonable steps for the prevention and detection of fraud and other irregularities. The trustees are responsible for the maintenance and integrity of the charity and financial information included on the charity’s website in accordance with legislation in the United Kingdom governing the preparation and dissemination of financial statements.

Approved by the trustees on 23[rd] November 2024 and signed on their behalf by:

Dr Gill Yudkin, Chair

Colin Wainwright, Treasurer

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INDEPENDENT EXAMINER’S REPORT TO THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH SHALOMSALAAM TRUST

I report to the trustees on my examination of the accounts of the British Shalom-Salaam Trust for the year ended 28 February 2024.

Responsibilities and basis of report

As the charity trustees of the Trust, you are responsible for the preparation of the accounts in accordance with the requirements of the Charities Act 2011 (the Act).

I report in respect of my examination of the Trust's accounts carried out under section 145 of the 2011 Act and in carrying out my examination I have followed all the applicable Directions given by the Charity Commission under section 145 (5) (b) of the Act.

Independent Examiner's statement

I have completed my examination. I confirm that no material matters have come to my attention giving me cause to believe in any material respect:

  1. accounting records were not kept as required by section 130 of the Act; or

  2. the accounts do not accord with those records; or

  3. the accounts do not comply with the applicable requirements concerning the form and content of accounts set out in the Charities (Accounts and Reports) Regulations 2008 other than any requirement that the accounts give a "true and fair view" which is not a matter considered as part of an independent examination.

I have no concerns and have come across no other matters in connection with the examination to which attention should be drawn in this report in order to enable a proper understanding of the accounts to be reached.

Ruth Hendrick FCA 14 Park Crescent London N3 2NJ

23[rd] November 2024

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Accounts for the Year Ending 28 February 2024

STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL ACTIVITIES

2023-24 2022-23
Note Unrestricted Restricted Total Unrestricted Restricted Total
£ £ £ £ £ £
Income
Donations received 192,169 127,863 320,032 115,794 69,907 185,701
Gift Aid on donations 1,932 923 2,854 1,716 345 2,061
Bank interest 467 - 467 65 - 65
Total income 194,568 128,786 323,353 117,575 70,252 187,827
Expenditure
Charitable Activities 2 127,558 75,881 203,439 114,855 76,417 191,272
Publicity/Fundraising
3		 279 - 279 772 - 772
Administration 4 136 - 136 134 - 134
Total Expenditure 127,973 75,881 203,854 115,761 76,417 192,178
Net income / (expenditure) 66,595 52,904 119,499 1,814 (6,165) (4,351)
Reconciliation of funds
Funds brought forward 74,881 10,486 85,367 73,067 16,651 89,718
Funds carried forward 141,476 63,390 204,866 74,881 10,486 85,367

BALANCE SHEET

BALANCE SHEET
As at 28 February 2024
28/2/2024 28/2/2023
Note £ £
Assets
Cash at bank 197,533 80,888
HMRC Gift Aid 7,333 4,479
Total Assets 204,866 85,367
Reconciliation of funds
Unrestricted funds 141,476 74,881
Restricted funds 63,390 10,486
Total Charity Funds 204,866 85,367

Notes to the Accounts

1 The financial statements have been prepared under the historical cost convention, and in accordance with Financial Reporting Standard 102, applicable in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland. The financial statements have been prepared in accordance with the Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP), "Accounting and Reporting by Charities" issued in 2019 and applicable accounting standards.

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2023-24 2022-23
Unrestricted Restricted Total Unrestricted Restricted Total
2 Charitable activities
Grants made 126,844 75,881 202,725 114,150 76,417 190,567
Direct bank charges 714 - 714 705 - 705
127,558 75,881 203,439 114,855 76,417 191,272
3 Publicity / Fundraising
Fundraising - - - 55 - 55
Printing postage stationery - - - 320 - 320
Publicity & Website 279 - 279 397 - 397
279 - 279 772 - 772
4 Administration
Bank charges 136 - 136 134 - 134
Sundry expenses - - - - - -
136 - 136 134 - 134

5 Trustee expenses

There were no expenses paid to trustees in either 2023/24 or 2022/23.

6 Restricted Funds (including Post Boxes)

1/3/23 Income Expenditure 28/2/24
Children's Fund 1,641 225 1,679 187
Gaza Fund 137 0 137 0
Jenin Fund 0 16,980 9,500 7,480
Trauma Fund 0 49,369 7,582 41,788
+972 Magazine 1,149 12,197 10,260 3,086
Christian Peacemaker Teams - CPT 725 0 725 0
Good Shepherd Collective 2,624 50 2,674 0
Jahalin Solidarity 1,214 178 0 1,392
Jenin Freedom Theatre 0 2,520 0 2,520
Al Marsad – Arab Human Rights Centre in Golan Heights
0		 15,000 15,000 0
New Profile 0 15,000 15,000 0
Physicians for Human Rights, PHR-I 125 0 125 0
Sadaka Reut 0 7,000 7,000 0
St. John's Eye Hospital 750 375 1,125 0
Tent Of Nations 972 2,090 0 3,062
Villages Group 1,150 7,801 5,075 3,876
Total 10,487 128,786 75,881 63,391

7 Grants and Post Box Transfers Made

Organisation £000s Organisation £000s
Afaq Jadeeda Association 6 Al Marsad – Arab Human Rights Centre in Golan Heights 21
Ahna Hon 4 Masafer Yatta Wrestling Club 1
Arous Elbahar 6 Min el Bahar 6
Community Peacemaker Teams 1 Negev Coexistence Forum 5
Domari Society of Gypsies in Jerusalem 9 New Profile 21
Elhawakeer 3 Al Nour Association for Community Development 6
Friendship Village 6 Palestine Trauma Centre 5
Future Association for Development and Environment 6 Parents Against Child Detention 6
Good Shepherd Collective 3 Physicians for Human Rights Israel 0.1
Haifa Association for Children with Diabetes 5 Rural Women’s Association 6
Hope Flowers School 1 Sadaka Reut Youth Partnership 7
Humans without Borders 6 St. John of Jerusalem Eye Hospital 1
Isha L'Isha 5 Al Tafawk Centre, Jenin 15
Kafa Association for Social Change in the Negev 8 Tishreen 5
Kotof El Khair Association 6 Villages Group 9
Lada'at - Choose Well 6 +972 Magazine 10

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BSST Governance

Personnel

BSST has no paid staff, premises or equipment. The trustees, each with extensive voluntary sector experience and in-depth expertise on Israel-Palestine, carry out all functions including appointing and training new Board members. New trustees are recruited by personal contact and by advertisement.

Trustee meetings are held every four to six weeks, where general policy, income generation and grant decisions are made.

Administrative Details

Administrative Details
Registered Charity Name British Shalom-Salaam Trust
Charity Registration Number 1103211
Registered Address 28 Huddleston Road, London N7 0AG
Bankers HSBC, 85 Lewisham High Street, London SE13 6BE
Independent Examiner Ruth Hendrick FCA, 14 Park Crescent, London N3 2NJ
E-mail bsst@bsst.org.uk
Website bsst.org.uk

BSST Trustees

BSST Patrons

BSST Advisory Group

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